We remember the song by Aristide Bruant (well... the not so young may remember it!) entitled "Sur la route de Louviers", and describing the activity of this famous roadmender
"who broke piles of stones
To put on the wheel arch".
For the Atlantic Wall
Well, in Treguennec, we didn't break piles of stones to put on the wheels, but... to build the Atlantic Wall! It's not the same scale, and that's probably why, instead of the nice roadmender, we built a huge crusher!
The German army, needing huge quantities of materials for its military constructions, and having a profusion of rollers on site, decided to build a roller crusher. Extraction began in 1942, the project being to crush about 1 million tonnes of sand dunes and weaken them.
For reconstruction
In January 1945, we were, as a result, in the middle of a reconstruction period, and we still needed crushed pebbles! And there was a whole stock of rollers collected by the German army on the site. The crusher therefore began crushing again in the summer of 1946. A year later, two thirds of the stock was eaten. And there, two problems appear: the railway line leading to the site is in a deplorable state and requires major work, and resuming extraction would lead to an increased fragility of the dune cord, whose large tides of February 1948 overcome 2 km.
Wisely, the decision to stop the operation was taken in February 1948.
Today....
In Prad ar C'hastell, there are still the remains of the pebble crushing plant. These include a huge wall 150 m long and 2 m thick, the ruins of the hoppers, the main crusher building and bunkers and, scattered around, mortar and machine gun pits and blockhouses.
Impressive places....
Mairie de Tréguennec
Bourg
29720 Tréguennec
Tél : 02.98.87.60.35.
Click on the image
