> Geolocalisation

Ty-Lia (stone house) or Ty ar C’hornandoned (house of korrigans)

What is a gallery grave?

More popular than the gallery grave, we know better the dolmen (taol mein, stone table) which is a tomb built with large stones or megaliths.

While the dolmen appeared at the beginning of the Neolithic period, the covered walkway appeared at the end of the same period. Unlike the covered walkways in the Paris Basin that are buried, our gallery graves are laid on the ground. Generally open to the east, these burials consist of a vestibule, itself prolonged by a sepulchral chamber. This burial chamber is the most important part of the gallery grave.

The essential differences between a dolmen and a gallery grave are the following ones:
 the dolmen only supports one slab of cover, unlike the gallery grave supports several.
 The corridor of a dolmen has a side entrance while the gallery grave has an entrance that is in line with the monument.

The gallery grave of the Île-Grande

This so-called short granite gallery grave (unlike the arched buttressed gallery grave with sloping walls) is located 35 meters above the sea level and is oriented east-west. It is 8.5 meters long and 1.6 meters wide and includes:
 a vestibule
 a burial chamber formed of two parallel walls (4 pillars to the north, 5 pillars to the south). The height of the slabs varies from 1m to 1m40.

Two large tables cover the monument. The covered walkway is surrounded by very high slabs, structures particular to the monuments of the Île-Grande and Keryvon. They are interpreted as an intermediate wall inside the mound and the purpose of which was probably to keep the earth from the tumulus.

Four excavation campaigns were carried out in 1866, 1868, 1909 and 1910. The material founded, now lost, included: - four polished axes - flint chips - decorated sherds and black pottery - a bronze disc, a iron object

The gallery grave of the Île-Grande was classified as a historic monument on January 23, 1956.

For the record, "an old woman, born in 1800, told at the end of the last century that lepers, in ancient times, had lived in the dolmen of the Île-Grande and were fed with a pitchfork. According to another tradition, the dolmen was inhabited by Kornandounezed, dwarfs, who liked to dance with the passer-by on moonlit nights. If you danced with them, they would thank you and announce you that you would have a boy and that there would be no need, for his birth, to get a midwife. "(Studies 1991)

These monuments are fragile:
Out of respect for these thousand-year-old monuments, and to prolong their preservation, children and adults are asked NOT TO CLIMB on the stones.