Dampsmesnil Allée Couverte, Dampsmesnil, Eure, N 49.1752, E 01.6501
Visited Wednesday 4th May 2005. Access 3, Condition 4, Ambience 4.
It’s easy enough to find the pathway that leads into the woods to this, its signed allée couverte from several places from several miles around. However, the tiny roads with cropped fields make it almost impossible to park anywhere (certainly a camper van) so it was a long walk. From the lane where the signposted track ascends into the woods, its about a half kilometre walk, following the main trackway up and keeping left. There is another little sign at a junction of woodland tracks, where you turn left, and about a further 100 metres along is this nice trench grave, along with a little notice board, which states that its over 4000 years old, and gives descriptions of the various features.
When you get there, it’s a bit of a corker, although falling into disrepair and in need of some affection. The main chamber is about 10 metres long, cut 2 metres deep into the hillside on an orientation of 218° looking down into the valley. There are three massive capstones, each more than 3 metres long, still in place and the remains of 2 more on this 2 metre wide Allée. The walls consist of large upright slabs with drystone walling between them, and the whole thing ends with a massive block at the north-eastern end.
What makes this place a bit special are two features not often found elsewhere. The most obvious is the remains of the lower half of the entrance stone positioned across the chamber with it’s finely cut circular porthole entrance. The top half of the stone is missing, but there is enough left to see the fine work which went into creating this entrance. It is very circular, with a diameter of about 50 cm, made using not just a single cut through the thick stone, but a sort of double circular stepped and lipped edge.
The other special feature of this grave is found on the stone just outside the main chamber, on the left hand side in front of the porthole stone, and with half a capstone sat on it. On this stone has been carved the likeness of a lady (or goddess), and her two breasts can clearly be made out (although in some distant time her left one has been largely hammered away) above which are the remains of four arcs representing necklaces. I thought I could also make out some of her outline, and a representation of a belt, or other such item. Much of this stone is very worn, and indeed I guess its only survived at all due to the presence of the half capstone, and I think it said on the notice board that her face could be made out in the past. I wonder who it was.
A few other stones lie scattered about, including what was probably one of the capstones which has been removed and lies partway down a steep slope several yards in front of the grave, behind the notice board.
After visiting this monument, I saw another one marked nearby on the map, so set off to look for that. Unfortunately there was a little old narrow bridge between the two places, and although my van fitted on to the bridge easily enough, I had a lot of trouble getting off the other side, and there was no way I was going to be able to reverse back off. After about 6 or 7 attempts to get between the protective bollards in the roadside, presumably put there to protect the much wider bridge, with a few scrapes down the side of my van, and a broken sidelight, I had discovered that the gap between the bollards was only an inch wider than the width of my van. I was obviously getting too confident about driving it around all these narrow places, and will have to take more care in future.
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road