A floor plan produced by Robert Waterhouse during his week-long study of the Hall at Le Boquet.

Phasing

1. A 14th OR 15th CENTURY TIMBER FRAMED PREDECESSOR? LATE MEDIAEVAL
   
   It's likely that a very simple timber-framed structure once stood here, typical of buildings in north-west Europe until the C15th to C16th. If so, its hearth may be the one we see today, misaligned with today's gable wall but perfectly aligned and square with a surviving line of deep-set wall footings which might well have belonged to a timber structure. Alternatively, any primitive timber predecessor could have been built for purely agricultural purposes.**
   
   

   ** Few such buildings survive in Manche or Calvados. Almost all were replaced by stone-built structures in the C15th and C16th – a period sometimes known as the 'great reconstruction'. The Romans built almost exclusively in stone or brick. After them, for about 500 years, the descendants of Germanic peoples (e.g. Saxons and Franks) settled throughout north-western Europe, building almost exclusively in timber. And until quite recently, in the Pays d'Auge (eastern Normandy), houses continued to built like in timber. Although Scandinavian 'norsemen', known to us as the Normans, preferred to build their churches and defensive structures in stone, nevertheless tens of thousands of mediaeval timber-framed houses survive in southern England and northern France. But in lower Normandy, perhaps because of the devastation caused by the Hundred Years' War and the Wars of Religion, the population overwhelmingly chose to rebuild their houses in stone – this being a region especially rich in granite, schist and sandstone. Beneath almost every C16th or C17th century house in Normandy, you might reasonably expect to find archaeological traces of a timber-built predecessor.

   When the renowned architectural historian Robert Waterhouse conducted his week-long analysis of Le Boquet in 2017, he strongly believed there had once been a timber frame facade along the eastern side of the house. He described how he was able to pass his hand through a clear gap between the eastern lateral wall and the re-built chimney gable wall and found a large space that he concluded was once occupied by a timber post.
   
   Subsequent masonry, he thought, had been placed around this post which, when it rotted away, left a sort of photographic negative. Since there is every likelihood that there was a timber-framed building here in the mediaeval or even late-mediaeval periods, it is not impossible that an eastern facade, with a window and a door, might have survived into, say, the C16th (see conclusions below).
   
   
   In 2018, when removing a 20cm-40cm depth of clay from the floor – in the northern half of the building only – there was no evidence of previous occupation layers, nor of any floor paving. It was the same as the clay-rich orange-brown sub-soil (fine particles like loess) found in the surrounding land which we know to be at least four metres deep and probably much more, given that the nearby well is 15 metres deep.
   
   
   The surviving hearth was never situated in the centre of the hall, nor in a lateral wall. It must date therefore from late mediaeval period (14th-15th century) or after.
   
   In 2010 it was found to be flush with the floor and paved with large stones (perhaps basalt), no doubt reused from La Pavée, a nearby Gallo-Roman road. They had the well-rounded edges of stones that had seen many centuries of wear.
   
   A couple of flag stones like those in the hearth had been used as chocks for one of four 1,400 litre cider barrels, still in situ in 2010.
   
   
   There were also about 10-15 sharp-edged schist slabs (quite unlike the rounded Roman slabs) which at first glance looked as though they might once have been flooring but whose positions corresponded with the ends of several two-tonne barrels we found there which needed sturdy supports to keep their oak staves off damp ground. Nevertheless, these slabs may once been flooring. Almost identical slabs still pave the adjacent C19th pigsty.
   
   
   However, there was also plenty of evidence of a lime-rich crust to the surface of what had clearly been a beaten earth floor. There was no evidence of a central hearth and no sherds or finds below the superficial first five centimetres. Those sherds found in the crust of the beaten earth floor (and outside the western doorway) have been conserved.
   
   
   There was clear evidence of a rudimentary underfloor drainage system running in two diagonal spurs from east to west across the northern half of the Hall, converging near the doorway and exiting beneath the northern end of today’s threshold on the western side of the building. There is surviving evidence too of three similar drains beneath the granary floor (in the southern half of the Hall) which run out under the low stone wall that now divides the Hall in two.
   
   Surviving evidence: Perhaps the Hearth. Perhaps a length of Stone Footings beneath the inner skin of Northern Gable Wall forming perfect right-angle with hearth. Robert Waterhouse's 'gap in the stonework'. Otherwise none.

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2. A late-C15th to mid-C16th THATCHED STONE-BUILT DOMESTIC HALL WITH A HEARTH CENTRALLY POSITIONED IN ITS GABLE WALL (LATE MEDIAEVAL)
   
   By local standards of the C16th, this is fairly large, well-proportioned building. Its walls cover a footprint of about 81 sq.m. but the whole layout differs from any typical local vernacular style. From what surviving evidence, it follows the classic maison-grange-étable formula only as far as the maison is concerned! The grange we see today is almost certainly of later date and nothing indicates there was ever an étable. (Only in the C19th were a cowshed and pigsty added to the north of the building.)
   
   At this stage the hearth was exactly centred in an original stone chimney gable wall, internally 5.78 metres wide. In 2010 it lay flush with the floor and below the outside ground level on the eastern side. It was closer to ground level on the western side. The system of drains (see above) provides some indication of levels.
   
   The inner skin of the chimney gable wall was entirely replaced and extended in the mid-1500s so only the external face of the gable wall dates from this phase. Its upper parts can be seen from outside but most of it is visible from within the adjacent C19th cowshed and pigsty and their hayloft above. In the pigsty it can clearly be seen that the original wall terminates and an extension has been added.
   
   
   The corbels, mantle and hood over the hearth projected further into the room than they do today, exactly covering the hearth below. It seems that in the next phase (see below) they were reduced in depth by about 30cm, as can be seen from the misaligned chamfer stops, visible under the hood –
   
   
   A line of surviving wall footings to the east of the hearth indicates this original gable wall was in this phase aligned slightly differently, forming a perfect right-angle with the hearth, which its replacement (see below) does not.
   
   The building was probably three bays long (3 x 3 metres) if the two surviving roof truss frames are from this period. Its length therefore was probably much as it is today. There is no evidence of any living space other than the ground floor although it is unlikely that the entire surface would have been used for domestic purposes. Perhaps half might have served agricultural needs. Nor is there any evidence of the position of doors or windows other than those we see today (all of which are believed to have been created later).
   
   Significantly, the chimney gable wall lacks (and presumably always lacked) the standard-issue Norman cupboard set into the wall beside the fireplace. Large recesses in the masonry for food storage, with wooden shelves and a cupboard door, were almost universal features of vernacular architecture in this region from at least the C16th onwards. It was something that a mason would have integrated during construction and not something that could easily be retro-fitted.
   
   
   The lack of such a cupboard suggests that the original wall was not built deep enough to accommodate one, or even that it was not originally destined for domestic use – supporting the theory that an agricultural building was later transformed into a habitation with a hearth and chimney.
   
   There is no evidence for the state of the eastern lateral wall or the southern gable wall in this phase. In any case we know that both were rebuilt at least once. But since the room must have had a window and there is no evidence of one on the western side we assume light arrived from the east where windows and doors would have been protected from the prevailing wind and rain.
   
   We are reasonably sure that today's 'agricultural' doorway in the western lateral wall was introduced at a later date, so the original principal doorway was probably somewhere along the southern half of the eastern facade (as it is today) even though ground level on that side would imply two or three steps down into the room... All in all, we are forever baffled by the question of doors and windows in the eastern lateral wall!
   
   
   It's possible that the northern end of the western lateral wall dates from this period but it's more likely that it was even earlier since it has an agricultural-looking ventilation hole just below the roof-plate – unnecessary and a nuisance in a domestic building.
   
   NB If it can be shown that the earliest surviving stonework in the building includes this stretch of wall, this might indicate that it first had an agricultural purpose before being converted into a house with a chimney and hearth.
   
   Surviving evidence: The Hearth. The outer skin of the Northern Gable Wall. Perhaps a length of Stone Footings in the eastern end of the Northern Gable Wall. Probably the majority of the Western Lateral Wall including its Ventilation Hole.

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3. A MID-C16th THATCHED STONE-BUILT DOMESTIC HALL WITH AN OFF-SET HEARTH IN A WIDENED GABLE WALL TO ACCOMMODATE A STAIRWAY TO A GALLERY AND UPPER CHAMBER RURAL RENAISSANCE
   
   This involved the demolition and rebuilding of the entire inner skin of the chimney gable wall to increase its internal length eastwards by 50cm (from 5.78 to 6.28 metres).
   
   The extra width was needed for the creation of a stairway and gallery along the eastern lateral wall giving access to an upper chamber (sometimes known as a solar).
   
   Inevitably the whole fireplace and chimney structure was now off-set to the left of the wall's new centre line.
   
   
   We can be reasonably certain of the line of the staircase. It rose about three steps high along the north-eastern gable wall before turning 90° along the north-eastern lateral wall and climbing about seven further steps. Fortunately a putt-hole survives to indicate where it was supported. If it climbed at about 45° it neatly avoided blocking either window and arrived at a gallery about 210 cm above the hall floor where it was no doubt supported by the two long horizontal timbers which survive embedded in the wall.
   
   

   This layout at Le Boquet exactly follows, in very simple form, the now well-known gallery-corridor formula, a rural renaissance architectural scheme frequently found in late-C15th to mid-C16th houses in Normandy's southern Manche. The gallery-corridor layout was designed for a hall (i.e. the sole main living room) which, until the mid-C16th, was almost always open to the roof-space but where access was needed to upper chambers that were situated on one or perhaps both sides of the open hall. The solution involved a staircase (either within the house or within a stair-tower) which rose to a gallery along a lateral wall overlooking the hall below (or perhaps partitioned off from it as at l'Erre). This gallery then gave access to the upper chambers at either end.
   
   The effect of the overhead gallery was to create a corresponding service corridor giving servants access to the great hall from behind a screen as well as to ground-floor kitchens and storerooms situated beneath the upper chambers.
   
   A curtain or tapestry often hung from the gallery to the ground below, separating off the service area from the hall. In C16th England a gallery wall hanging of this sort was often known as an Arras (a formerly English city in northern France famed for its woven textiles). Shakespeare is not alone in using the Arras as a means for characters to over-hear the conversations of others, often leading to conspiracies or even assassinations when victims were stabbed from 'behind the Arras'.
   
   There are scores of examples of this architectural scheme in southern Manche but the outstanding example is that of the Manoir de l'Erre at Champcervon (see picture above).
   
   By around 1570-85 the fashion was to 'close' the hall by introducing a ceiling over the hall (see l'Aumoire (Morigny), La Ricouvière and La Bouillère (Saint-Vigor). The former gallery then became a simple corridor on the first floor though it also provided access to the new room created over the former open hall. While it would have been far easier to heat a room that was no longer open to the roof, the seigneurial class also seem overwhelmingly to have acquired a need for discrete private upper chambers and bedrooms, well away from the more formal reception hall below where cooking still took place over the open fire and the hubbub of domestic life must have been distracting. It was at this point that the civilising Renaissance sophistication of northern Italy first influenced Norman households. Anglo-Norman historians owe a great debt to David Nicolas-Méry who first identified and described the 'gallery-corridor' feature in the early 2000s, finding many examples in south Manche. The author was fortunate to take part in this quest and to discover further examples!

   At Le Boquet we can therefore date this phase (i.e. open to the roof-space) to some time during the first half of the C16th.
   The position and height of the upper chamber can be seen from three surviving corbel holes in the southern end of the western lateral wall. One of these holes even contains its original corbel. Although Le Boquet must always have held a very low position in the scale of Norman seigneuries, for the owners of this very humble 'hall' the creation of an upper chamber would nevertheless have been a significant development and some mark of their local status.
   
   
   This upper chamber was thus accessed by a stairway which rose about 210cm to a gallery about 230cm long on the eastern lateral wall, overlooking the hall below.
   
   From here there must have been another two or three steps (about 50cm) before one entered the upper chamber through a low doorway (only about 130cm high) which was constrained by the fixed height of the pre-existing southern roof frame truss.
   
   
   Inevitably the truss beam became the doorway's lintel, on the underside of which are two surviving mortice holes which once contained the tenons of a pair of door posts. The lintel between them has been carefully chamfered to give the formerly crude roof frame a touch of elegance (around the doorway at least...).
   
   
   A line of holes along the top of the southern truss beam show that the gallery was closed off from the hall below. The holes received the vertical stud-work of a wattle-and-daub partition that reached the ceiling at the level indicated by two decorated corbels on either side of the chimney flue (set at slightly different heights). Almost certainly this partition was like the one that survives at the Manoir de l'Erre.
   
   
   The upper chamber presumably had its own ceiling but we do not know whether this corresponded to the pair of corbels in the chimney gable wall about 30 cm above the wall-plate level, or perhaps the corbel holes higher up in the same wall, just above the light embrasures.
   
   
   The southern truss frame may at this stage have been moved northwards to increase the bedroom space to almost half the length of the Hall. If so, this may explain why the northern truss frame was also moved – so far northwards in fact that it now serves little purpose at all. The purlins do not really need it since they can be seated directly into the adjacent chimney gable wall.
   
   The northern truss frame seems to be of a similar age and style to the southern truss frame, though with fewer chamfers and less refinement, probably because it was not part of the upper chamber structure. They both use the 'peg-lock' system for holding an angled tenon on the king-post into an angled mortice in the truss.
   
   But strangely while the beam of the northern truss frame sits on the wall-plates at each end, the eastern end of the southern truss beam has to be supported by a post sitting on a ledge because the eastern wall at this point is not sufficiently thick. We know this part of the wall was built later (see below) but the failure to make the wall thick enough is strange...
   
   
   The Hall probably once had three conventional bays of equal size but the trusses were moved northwards when the upper chamber was built and perhaps again by a small margin when granary was built (see later).**
   
   

   ** In 2022 CAL moved the southern truss frame southwards again by about 30cm in order to align it better with the two beams below it. At the same time a new douglas frame was placed on the southern gable wall to replace a rotten half-frame that must have dated from the construction of the southern gable wall.

   Returning to the ground floor and the new internal skin of the northern gable wall, this now consisted of high quality masonry around the original hearth and incorporated today's chimney breast including its stone niches, timber corbels, timber mantle, clay-rendered stone hood (probably whitewashed), stone chimney flue and four ceiling corbel holes (above and below the light embrasures) two of which still contain their timber corbels.
   
   It also allowed for the creation of the rather remarkable hidden cache – the arm-deep space within the thickness of the wall for hiding money or small valuables. Finally there were two ventilation light embrasures of differing conformation at the apex of the gable, presumably to light an attic space**.

   ** There is plenty of local evidence to show that attic spaces such as this were used to accommodate maids' quarters and/or dovecotes.)

   Almost certainly it was now that the oak corbels and oak mantle were set back into the wall (see the 30 centimetre chamfer misalignment under the hood) so that they protrude less into the room. If they were set as originally intended they would be a precise fit for this particular hearth. Today the hearth is notably not entirely covered by the reduced mantle.
   
   
   The rebuilding of the inner skin of the northern gable wall also explains why no attempt was made to link the internal stonework into the lateral walls although interlinking quoins are visible outside (some of which have fractured).
   
   The presence of the upper chamber corbel holes tells us the western lateral wall existed at this stage and the exterior of this wall can be distinguished from the northern end by the presence of a regular pattern of surviving putt-holes for scaffolding. Disturbance of this pattern suggests that the present 'agricultural' western doorway was a later creation (but see later discussion).
   
   Significantly too, the inside of the southern end of the western lateral wall contains two lantern recesses which indicate they needed more than natural ambient light. This would have been the case if the upper chamber was blocking the light. But this was probably not a service area as there is no evidence of a waste water spout from a sink through this wall.
   
   Lantern recesses were usually set quite high in a wall: (a) to disperse light as widely as possible and (b) to reduce fire risk. These two niches are indeed set high if you exclude the subsequent raised height of the granary threshing floor (see below). Altogether the whole length of the western lateral wall may contain at least three distinct phases of masonry with much disturbance around the wester doorway.
   
   While the corbel holes in the western lateral wall give us a height and depth for the upper chamber we have no way of knowing what supported it above the floor of the hall below. It may have sat on a transverse beam or even an arcade such as the one that supported Le Boquet's C19th cart shed extension (see below).
   
   And very importantly we do not know what the space below the upper chamber was used for. This would have been almost 50 per cent of the building's surface area. Was it agricultural or domestic – housing animals or humans? Was it a store for tools, grain, seed, ploughs, cider barrels or even the means of making cider itself? Was it in fact a granary, therefore conforming more closely to the classic maison-grange-étable model? If so there were very possibly two separate doorways in the southern half of the eastern lateral wall.
   
   Among other considerations are these:
   
   The upper chamber surely needed a window of its own but we have no evidence for one because the corresponding length of wall was later rebuilt.
   
   The eastern lateral wall stonework around the taller of the two windows is almost certainly contemporary with the new chimney gable wall but, if so, why is it made of fragile, non-matching schist rather than sandstone?**

   ** Did the very competent mason who built the fireplace wall in fact build another lateral wall with a window that has now disappeared? The larger of the two windows is correct for its time and positioned as one would expect, though it is missing the almost obligatory iron grill and its lintel appears to have been replaced. But the smaller window is an illogical size and perhaps only needed for the staircase. Would he have created the illogical smaller window? Was this window created by an amateur later on? How else should we read the very unsatisfactory situation in this corner of the building, visible from the outside? Missing stonework seems to have been filled with clay, alongside bodged repairs... Is today's eastern lateral wall a repair/replacement for something that collapsed?

   
   Another mystery involves the smaller window which looks like an afterthought, set in a severely misaligned length of poor masonry, with inadequate footings and bulging stonework that has been badly repaired. It may be that an enclosed timber staircase attracted damp and rot over a period of time and this damaged the wall, but its misalignment and poor construction remain puzzling. With still no evidence for the state of the southern end of the eastern lateral wall nor for the southern gable wall, we do not know how the southern end of the thatched roof would have been supported. Did it have a pointed gable to match the northern end or perhaps a hip roof of some sort designed to deal with prevailing south-westerly winds?
   
   Surviving evidence: Entire Northern Gable Wall – inner + outer skins. The Hearth. Entire Fireplace + Chimney arrangement. Ceiling Corbels in Northern Gable Wall at roof-plate height. Mortice holes for Gallery Doorposts and Chamfered lintel detailing under the Southern Truss Beam. The entire Northern end of the Eastern Lateral Wall + 2 Windows. A Putt-hole and Lateral Timbers supporting a Staircase and Gallery to an Upper Chamber. Stud-work holes for the Upper Chamber Partition on top of the Southern Truss Beam. Upper Chamber Corbels in southern end of the Western Lateral Wall + Lantern Recesses in the wall beneath them. The northern part of the Western Lateral Wall + Ventilation Hole.

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4. AN ABANDONED LATE C17th OR EARLY C18th THATCHED STONE-BUILT HALL NOW CONVERTED TO AGRICULTURAL USE EARLY MODERN FRANCE
   
   The Hall now appears to have been abandoned for domestic purposes. It could be that plague, war or economic decline played a role in this – or even seigneurial diktat.** The building appears to have become agricultural again.

   ** The 17th century in Normandy saw severe economic depression driven by inflation and heavy taxation during Louis XIV's wars. One result was the catastrophic famine of 1693–1694 which killed an estimated 1.3 to 2 million people nationwide and caused widespread social unrest. An intriguing aspect of this is that in 2010 there were absolutely no carbon deposits, nor any signs of soot, in the fireplace or chimney flue. The author has no idea how long it might take for such evidence to disappear quite naturally but this in itself is some measure of how long the building must have been unoccupied. There was however evidence in 2010 that someone had been distilling cider to produce calvados brandy under the eastern side of the chimney hood. At a later stage (1970s?) a plastic pipe was laid from Boquet Hall to the bread oven fifty metres away where illegal distilling took place with perhaps less chance of being discovered by the douanes!

   It was transformed again, this time by the introduction of two massive, un-chamfered oak transverse beams in order to create an agricultural space below and haylofts above. The beams, set just above head height at ground floor level, creating three unequal bays, fitted with oak floor joists.
   
   It is worth noting that the joists are rough-and-ready. There is no chamfering as might be expected in a domestic setting. Yet at the same time it's unusual to see an oak-joist ceiling with a clay floor above in a purely agricultural setting: e.g. if the space above was to be a hayloft. The usual agricultural method was to lay substantial ash or hazel branches across rudimentary joists made of thicker ash or hazel.
   
   
   We believe the whole surface was involved because the ends of three pegged joists from the array of joists in the southern bay have survived. Inevitably the stairway and gallery would have disappeared at this stage and there is no evidence of any stairway access to the first floor in the northern and central bays though there may have been steps or a fixed ladder in the southern bay.

   Is it possible that a labourer was expected to live in one half of a barn, warmed perhaps by a fireplace but exposed to the prevailing wind through a wide agricultural doorway?

   The most likely access points to the newly created first floor space would have been through hayloft doorways via ladders from the outside. If so, it is very obvious that the masonry around the northern hayloft doorway is not homogenous. The northern side of the doorway has been simply broken through leaving a ragged edge. On the southern side of the doorway the masonry is neatly finished – presumably because it was constructed later. This is useful to us because it indicates that the surrounding wall to the north pre-dates the introduction of the beams which created the hayloft while the masonry to the south must be subsequent to both.
   
   
   Two transverse beams look far more agricultural than domestic and the manner in which they were introduced into the pre-existing western lateral wall is clear from the 'broken' masonry. It seems clear that one of these beams was seated into the pre-existing 'bodged' length of wall with its window (see above). They may also be associated with the creation of the western doorway which is also agricultural rather than domestic in both form and height. The first evidence we have for the existence of this western doorway is that one of the beams sits uncomfortably on top of the end of the doorway's crude and deformed lintel.
   
   The ceiling created by these two beams survives largely intact. It is composed of short lengths of split chestnut (about 30cm) which were tightly rolled in straw and then dipped into clay mud (made from sub-soil outside).
   
   
   These were then laid side by side across the joists, providing a solid base on which to apply about 20 centimetres of damp clay soil which then dried to form a very durable and resistant floor above the joists. This was the standard method of making an upper floor in this region but the overwhelming majority of them had been lost by the late C20th and early C21st.**

   In grander properties, where an upper floor was inhabited, a clay floor like this was often topped by small square tiles, often using deep green or ochre glazes (see images from the Manoir du Guescelin at Longueville).

   It’s still unclear what the eastern and southern walls consisted of at this stage, so we have no proof that there had ever been a main domestic door into the Hall (on the eastern side?) other than the agricultural looking western door.
   
   Nevertheless, it seems almost unthinkable that a south-eastern facade with windows, in this context and in this region would not have contained a main front door for domestic purposes!
   So, one might well wonder why the formerly domestic Hall would ever have needed a western doorway (which took the full brunt of the prevailing wind and rain) if there existed a sheltered eastern doorway. And yet, curiously, the Le Boquet 'House', 50 metres south, shows clear evidence of having had an almost identically positioned low western doorway that reached ground surface level (see photos right). Were doors like this necessary at some stage because an agricultural task required the use of domestic living space?
   Clearly the western doorway was once considerably wider than it is today – large enough for farm carts of the period or for cider production, including ‘700 pots’ (1,400 litre) cider barrels. its width has been altered at least once. Indeed the masonry around this doorway and its awkward lintel shows radical alterations have occurred. The present threshold stone looks like an improvised import and would have impeded cartwheels. It even impedes human access at the door's present height and there is no evidence for when it was introduced or what preceded it. And since it is unlikely that anyone was expected to live in the Hall at this stage, a threshold might only have become necessary much later.

   We should remember that in 2010 the chimney flue was entirely free of soot or any evidence of a fire other than some circumstantial evidence that someone had been distilling cider to produce 'calva' and condensation had affected the eastern side of the chimney hood. We also know that much of Le Boquet was likely to have been planted with apple trees. Lightly alcoholic cider was the only 'safe' and everyday drinking alternative to well water – though it might have been added to well-water as an antiseptic.

   It may be that the former occupants moved into one of the two other houses at Le Boquet: the C16th/C17th Boquet 'House' (75 metres to the south) or to the C18th/C19th Boquet 'Cottage', (50 metres to the west) and that the Hall was now turned over to farming practises including the production of cider and calva.
   
   Surviving evidence: Two Transverse Beams. Floor Joists in the northern and central bays and Peg-end Joists protruding into the central bay from the southern bay. The wide Doorway in the Western Lateral Wall.

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5. A SUBSTANTIAL LATE-18th OR EARLY-19th CENTURY DEVELOPMENT OF A THATCHED STONE AGRICULTURAL BUILDING AS A GRANARY AND CIDER PRESS NAPOLEONIC ERA
   
   At this stage almost the all the southern half of the Hall was transformed into a granary involving a considerable investment in masonry and carpentry. It suggests a period of agricultural prosperity – perhaps the result of freedoms gained by the 1789 French Revolution.
   
   The project involved entirely rebuilding the southern half of the eastern lateral wall and the entire southern gable wall (topped with a small timber frame to create a hipped roof). It also involved the building of a dedicated pressoir on the southern gable wall. These involved good quality masonry done in sandstone. Within these walls a raised threshing floor was built under a high ceiling, with a hay or straw loft above.
   
   
   The ceiling survives, well constructed in good quality timber, seated on a new beam that was introduced between the southern truss beam in the roof space and the southern transverse beam below it at ground floor level.
   
   
   The granary was also equipped with the tall eastern door we see today which allowed sheaves of wheat or barley to be pitch-forked onto the threshing floor where men, wielding flails, separated the grain from the straw and chaff at harvest time.
   
   Of course this door may be an adaption of a pre-existing doorway, evidence for which might one day be found beneath the threshing floor. It seems very probable that earlier phases of the Hall had a doorway somewhere in the southern part of the eastern wall.

   A standard feature of almost all farms in this region from at least the C16th through to the C19th was the raised granary grange with a tall doorway positioned adjacent to the farm's sole living space la maison (often with an internal communicating door). While threshing occurred at harvest time in July/August, the granary also served as the business centre of the farm throughout the year, acting as an office, a storeroom for valuable tools and a dry space for stocking grain, seed etc. One can imagine the master organising work and deploying labourers from here.

   
   The threshing floor was set 60 centimetres above the ground on a bed of large, loosely packed stones to prevent the rise of humidity. Onto this was laid a layer of beaten earth (terre-battue restored by us in 2019).
   
   The raised floor was retained by a low stone wall across the full width of the building, topped by a chamfered timber sole plate. Three drainage holes passed under the retaining wall and once joined the east-west drain that crossed the northern half of the hall and flowed beneath the threshold of the western lateral door.
   
   Today the wall plate beside the threshing floor supports a partition of light-weight planks of inferior quality, along with a poorly made communicating door. The partition is amateurishly attached to the underside of the southern beam by flimsy laths.
   
   The building is thus divided in two on the ground floor. But when did this occur? The investment in the granary would surely have foreseen use of the whole building for agriculture, so that, for example, small carts of the period might have been driven into the former living space to be loaded and unloaded from the raised threshing floor. And this in turn suggests a reason for the widening of the western door.
   
   The other possibility is that the partition was designed to exclude light from an area now full of barrels of cider and to prevent the dank humidity from the barrels affecting the cereal products. A wide doorway is certainly needed to when barrels are taken out for cleaning or replacement.
   
   
   Most significantly the granary development also seems to have involved the construction another building that had almost entirely disappeared by 2010. This was an extension beyond the southern gable wall to house a cider press. This addition can be seen in the Napoleonic map of the commune of Pont-Farcy, dated 1832.
   
   
   The granary and the cider press must have been a single development because when the southern gable wall was built, it was equipped with a lantern recess on its exterior wall which would have been an interior wall of the adjacent cider press building. The large stone that forms the back of the recess is clearly visible in the granary today. That lantern recess itself has been retained, though it is currently hidden by kitchen cabinets.
   
   The only other remains of this pressoir were the heavy oak blocks that sat above and below the layers of matting that contained the apple pulp. The blocks were rather inevitably known as the the bélier and the mouton...
   
   So, if apples were being crushed and pressed to produce cider, that cider would have had to be stored nearby in a number of barrels in a dark, humid atmosphere. Almost certainly the northern half of the Hall, with its fireplace, was where the barrels were kept. Indeed, in 2010 three of them (with evidence of a fourth) were still in situ, set up on chocks, with a total capacity of 5,600 litres. There is no doubt that by now the Hall was entirely devoted to the processing and storing of cereals and apples, both of which would have been produced on the surrounding five hectares. It seems the Hall was never inhabited again until 2021.
   
   

   Le Boquet's Brabant plough survives here to this day, along with the market cart (made by Eugène Briard of Beuvrigny, Manche) that would have taken the grain for milling at the nearby Moulin Hy. Even the wrought-iron scales that hung in the granary for weighing sacks of grain and flour have survived, along with measuring pots, a pair of clogs, etc.
   
   

   In 2010 we were told that the last remains of the timber superstructure of the cider press were destroyed in the great gale of 1999. Its stone foundations remained but from 1999 to 2018 the site was used as a covered hay manger for beef cattle. In the years 2018-2021 the author built the 'New Hall', a timber-framed hall of about 80 sq.metres, the northern third of which sits on the site of the ruined cider press building.
   
   To this day there is a slightly raised area due south and very close to the end of the New Hall where a granite apple crusher (une tour à pommes) had once stood. This consisted of a circular trough with a heavy granite wheel that was pulled around by a horse or donkey to crush the apples before the resulting pulp was passed to the press.

   [In 2010, by which time the thatch had long given way to corrugated iron sheeting, the lateral walls supported not only the two roof truss frames we've already studied but an improvised third frame, at the southern end. This had been set at an angle so that a curved hip roof was shaped to resist westerly winds. This arrangment would originally have been intended for thatch. However, at some stage later, the beam of this third frame was cut out, presumably to create more space in the hay-loft, and inevitably the tops of the lateral wall were forced outwards, notably on the western side. The walls were then reinforced with a transverse, three centimetre steel bracing rod with large X ends on each side of the building. In 2020 the author removed the offending frame, replaced the rotten frame on the southern gable with a new one (at full height) and replaced the bracing rod with an angled steel elbow anchored into the southern wall, allowing the rod and its eastern X to be removed.]

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6. THE COMING OF THE COW & A 'CEREAL' DECLINE.
   
   The granary probably remained active through most of the C19th but aerial photographs from the early 1950s show that most of land around Le Boquet had been planted with apple trees and whatever was left might just have supported one cow or two. Elsewhere from the 1860s onwards, Normandy's famous dairy industry transformed the lives, architecture, landscape and economy of farmers in the region. Instead of working all year round to produce a single crop at harvest time, hundreds of thousands of small peasant farmers now milked cows twice a day and were able to sell milk, cream, butter, cheese and meat as cash crops on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. This development was a direct consequence of the industrial revolution and specifically the arrival of canals and railways.

   Cows produce milk, cream, butter and cheese as well calves fattened for veal. In addition they produce bullocks that can be grown to produce large quantities of beef. But none of this fresh produce could reach Paris or even local towns until there was a rapid means of transport and even refrigeration such as railways could offer. Furthermore, herds of cattle soon exhausted the fields unless the soil was fed with fertilisers and lime to replace the calcium that left in the form of milk. And here the development of canals allowed vast quantities of lime and fertilisers to be brought from the coast up canalised rivers such as the Vire and the Orne to inland ports such as Pont-Farcy.

   Fattened veal calves might produce a quarterly income while full grown beef cattle might be sold every six months. But to do this they needed a cowshed in which to milk their cows, a dairy in which to process the milk, a calf shed in which to fatten the calves and a hay-loft in which to store enough hay to feed their livestock through the winter. And, beside all this, grain had to be grown and threshed in the granary for bread-making in the bread oven, for feeding pigs in a pigsty, and as an additional cash crop in hard times.
   
   Unsurprisingly all these buildings exist at Le Boquet. All are to be found within about 70 metres of the well which might be considered the central and most vital resource of all. These ancillary buildings appeared soon after 1860 (as confirmed by local maps of the time) and they were all built in a characteristic style (see Ancillary Buildings below).