Pierre du Sacrifice

Pierre du Sacrifice (Boixe A) – Fieldnotes

Visited September 13th 2008

Came to the Forêt-de-Boixe at the end of a long hot day travelling around Charente with some English friends who owned a house in the region. These were normal, non-megalithic folk and were more interested to walk in the forest then looking at barrows or discarded old rocks. We parked up at the side of the road, just off the D18/D116 and as a consequence missed the official car park along with the information board giving details of the monuments, site layout and the history of the forest.

While the rest of the party headed off down the main track to the large clearing in the Chalet Boixe, I scouted around the forest looking in vain for the main tumulus, the Tumulus de la Boixe. After getting disorientated (I’m only told to get lost), I retraced my steps and came upon a little wooden sign saying Dolmen. Thinking this was the Tumulus de la Boixe, which was said to be 30m in diameter and 3m high, I was expecting to come out into a sizable clearing in the forest. Alas the primary objective of the mission was not to be and I had to contend myself with the secondary one in the shape of the Pierre du Sacrifice.

This stone is impressive though being around 4 metres long, 2 metres wide and about 1 to 1.5 meters in thickness. The official national de forest have provided an information board with some interesting facts about it, and artist impressions of the tumulus it came from. Apparently this was, until fairly recently, the largest tumulus in the area, measuring 45 metres in diameter, and standing 4 metres high with a circumference of 140 meters. The board then goes on to say that the tumulus was destroyed in the 19th century during construction of the D18 Mansle to Saint Amant de Boxie road, although this road was originally the old Roman road from from Périgueux to Poitiers called Chaussade Shod or path. Maybe the tumulus was destroyed for its building material when the road was “improved” and this stone was considered to be “cursed” and so is all that remains. See the section on additional folklore which is included below for more on this.