the extraction of granite highlighted in Manche and Calvados

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The first place is on the belvedere of Saint-Michel-de-Montjoie (Manche), above the Granite Park-Museum. And the 2nd at the entrance to the Noues de Sienne socio-cultural center (Calvados).

Between Manche and Calvados

In the fall of 2023, the operation was launched “Granite-Stone Memory” in the territory straddling the Channel and Calvados around the municipalities of Saint-Michel-de-Montjoie, Saint-Pois, Champ-du-Boult, Gathemo, Coulouvray-Boisbenâtre, to which are added the municipalities of Champ-du- Boult and Le Gast in the Calvados.

Granite extraction and shaping

“This border area between the departments of Manche and Calvados has experienced a thriving business around the extraction of granite and its shaping for a wide variety of uses,” explains Yvon Davis, director of the La Loure association.

Also suitable for construction, urban development (pavers), funerary monuments, etc. This centuries-old activity is now almost extinct. Only the Saint-Michel-de-Montjoie extraction quarry remains, managed by the Châtel company.

Granite workers

It was on this occasion that the associations La Loure and Le Labomylette, with their respective experience in promoting oral heritage and photographic creation and accustomed to working jointly by combining words and images, initiated the operation “Granite-Stone Memory”. “It aims to collect the words of the inhabitants and granite workers still alive to offer a sensitive and lived approach around local exploitation granite. »

Like a soap opera

All this field work feeds into a photographic and textual exhibition, presented in an evolving manner on this granite territory. “Here there is no final exhibition but rather work in progress. That is to say a regular restitution productions produced and a renewal of them to interest and pique the curiosity of residents, like a soap opera. »

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