A couple of weeks ago we were walking around Rocamadour and discovered these large iron bottomless pots rusting on the ground, they were probably 1.2 metres in diameter and perhaps a metre high. We puzzled over these for the rest of our walk. Could they be part of an old quarry working or, as they were near a ruined mill, might they have been used to haul flour up to the top of the surrounding cliffs? Mysterious indeed.
The weather was forecast to be good on Saturday so we set off to Larroque for a walk which would take us on a grand tour of the Forest de Grésigne and this is where our earlier mystery fromRocamadour was solved. Just after Les Cascades de l'Audoulou we passed the boundary markers for the forest and climbed steeply up onto an ancient roman road shortly after which we came across a complete iron pot.
It transpires that these iron pots or marmite de charbonniers have three sections: the base, middle and lid. The middle sections were what we saw in Rocamadour and were used in the fabrication of charcoal which is nearly pure carbon. The charcoal burner at the Forest de Grésigne is a large kiln, which is about two metres diameter and a little over a metre in height. This was packed tightly with wood, mostly hardwoods such as oak, which have a very slow burn. When it was lit moisture and other compounds were burned off from the wood and then at the right time which is determined by thecharbonnier the kiln was sealed with a large lid which creates a low oxygen environment for the wood to cook in.
So our mystery is now solved.
Nev
