Cortal

In the Catalan speech of the the Eastern Pyrenees, sheep-fold says cortal , that the building is in a village or on a place of pasture, that it is covered with a roof of tiles or thatch or with a stone vault under a ground coating.

Stone cortals of Conflent

It is under this term of cortal that the large sheep-folds were indicated hones some that one meets in the top Conflent, on the communes of Corneilla-with-Conflent, Clara, Sansa, Prades, at altitudes going of 620 m to 1645 Mr. These sheep-folds intended for the sheep are not driers or “attics” with cheeses, function reserved for another type of building.

Terminology

It was believed that the term orri (literally “attic”) was the name of these constructions. It of it is nothing: thus, which is described as orri in the example of Sansa, it is the plate itself, devoted to the culture of the cereals (grains) before the XIXe century, before being used as pasturage.

Another proof: in Taurinya, a large stone sheep-fold bears the name of Cortal of Manually .

Structure

In the form of long parallelepipeds to the limestone walls, of schist or granite built with or without mortar, these sheep-folds have for frontage one of the pinions and couvrement a vault clavée in cradle ( cortal of Pla of Orri with Sansa) or a ceiling of flagstones supported by pilasters engaged in the side walls and with the encorbellées faces (Rofaga with Prades, Ambulla with Corneilla-of-Conflent, Ciscal with Clara). The top of the pinion-frontage either rectilinear, or is marked by a very light pediment. The sealing is ensured by a coating of ground (or water trough ) turfed, slightly convex or with two hardly marked slopes.

Economic context and social

One finds these cortals with particular architecture on plates (or plas ) located between 800 m and 1400 m of altitude. One of these cortals , the cortal Delcasso of Pla of Orri with Sansa, informs us, thanks to the archivistic study which was made by it, about their genesis. Not carried on the of 1824 registers, it was built in the current of the last three quarters of the XIXe century on behalf of the richest local landowner in order to shelter his herd, which accounted for 1/3 of the ovine livestock of the commune between 1897 and 1900. In Sansa, the Delcasso family had acquired the totality of the pla .

Each one of these stone sheep-folds required, for its construction, the extraction of hundreds of tons of stone and the intervention of masons with dry stone, which supposes an important financial investment that only of big landowners were able to agree.

Monographs

The cortal of Rofaga with Prades

Altitude: 620 Mr.

Of outline drawing of trapezoid right-angled, it makes outside 10,30 m length on 5,85 m broad and internally 8,95 m out of 4,10 m, its pinion-frontage representing the oblique side of the trapezoid.

With semi-length, two pillars engaged in the side walls face (in other words pilasters). Stand out of 1 m at the base, they meet to 2 m height, dividing the interior into two spans arched in cupola (height under vault: 2,87 m).

The vault of the second span is capped by a bored flagstone of a round hole 25 cm in diameter, perhaps intended for ventilation (rather than with the evacuation of the smoke of a hearth - incongruous in a sheep cattle shed).

Five small openings of ventilation are bored in the walls to approximately 50 cm of the ground, two in each long wall, one in the wall of the bottom.

The cortal of Ambulla with Corneilla-of-Conflent

Altitude: 738 Mr.

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