Le Trillol dolmen, or la Cabane des Maures

This dolmen can now be reached quite easily, thanks to a local historian. It is about 800 m. beyond Le Trillol métairie, on the Ruffiac – Montgaillard road – signposted and waymarked. It’s a steep but enjoyable walk under shadey trees.

It has been known under various names, from the strictly accurate ‘dolmen de la Falière’ (the name of the hill it’s on) – to the fanciful  ‘Cabane des Maures’. However, only two Moors could fit inside, as Sicard and Landriq discovered when they went to study it in July 1922.

It’s a ‘dolmen simple’, common around the Corbières & Minervois.

The capstone or table measures 2 m 45 x 2 m 42, with a thickness of about 40 cms. The backstone or ‘chevet’ is 1 m 75 x 0 m 95
The left or north side orthostat is 1 m 72 x 1 m 70, while the right side measures  1 m 20 x 1 m 88
It is orientated 270° – exactly west.

‘un beau dolmen, bien entier, qui se dresse majestueusement’ declared Sicard in his report to la Société d’Etudes Scientifiques de l’Aude. It may be simple but it has a massive presence – and it seems extraordinary that it has remained in complete obscurity for all these years. No study has been published and it appears on no map and in no guidebook.

But Sicard was disappointed to find that it had been recently ransacked – and he was not slow in naming his suspect : the local Superintendant of Roads, Monsieur Isidore Gabelle, ‘an erudite and avid collector’. [The same man who in 1891, found some of the first dinosaur fossil bones in the Aude near Esperaza, but did not recognize them as such. Sicard’s best friend, Antoine Fages similarly mis-identified yet more in 1903.]