Published 09/23/2024 5:14 PM
Video length: 6 min
Brittany: the 1000 lives of Meneham, a village with 300 years of existence
Brittany: the 1000 lives of Meneham, a village with 300 years of existence
(France 2)
On the Breton coast, the village of Meneham (Finistère) still stands proudly. For 300 years, it served as a surveillance point for the Breton coast, before being abandoned in the 20th century and reborn in the early 2000s.
Nestled on the Côte des Légendes in Brittany, the village of Meneham, in Kerlouan in Finistère, has lived several lives over the course of its 300-year history. Since the Middle Ages, a path has been used to monitor the coastline. Sylvie Gougay is passionate about the place, which she knows by heart. An observation post was built in the 18th century, “so well hidden, between these masses of gigantic rocks”she observes.
Among local legends, some attribute these shapes to giants transformed into stone. You have to go around it and infiltrate inside to access the guardhouse. At the end of the Empire, in the 19th century, customs officers settled there and created a barracks in 1830 to fight against smuggling. After the war, the village gradually emptied of its inhabitants and gradually fell into disuse, before being reborn in the 2000s, completely renovated by the local authorities.
