MENHIR DE LA TONNELLE

Originally, this menhir, 3.60m high, 1.10m wide and 0.35m thick, stood at a place called Bussoleries de la Tonnelle in Saint Hilaire de Riez. Marcel Baudouin, an archaeologist and ethnographer with a passion for the excavation of megalithic sites, discovered it and had it excavated in 1906, trying in vain to have it classified. But by 1913, it had been knocked down again. To save it from destruction, he bought this Neolithic monument around 1918 and had it erected on his family vault in the Croix de Vie cemetery. On 15 November 1941, when Marcel Baudouin died, the Tonnelle menhir was moved to his grave in the Croix de Vie cemetery.