Village des Bories is an open-air museum of 20 or so dry stone huts located 1.5 km west of the Provençal village of Gordes, in the Vaucluse department of France. The area was once an outlying district of the village, under the official name of 'Les Savournins', while the grouping of huts were called 'Les Cabanes' in local parlance.
These huts, which were once agricultural outhouses used on a seasonal basis, stand on a hill at an average altitude of 270âÂÂ275 metres, between the Sénancole stream â its border to the West â and the Gamache vale â its border to the East, in what the Gordes villagers call the âÂÂgarrigueâ (scrubland) or âÂÂmontagneâ (the hills).
In the 1809 land map, the hamlet is referred to as âÂÂhameau des SavourninsâÂÂ, a designation which is abridged to âÂÂLes Savourninsâ in the 1956 land map. In local parlance, it was still called âÂÂLes cabanesâ (the huts) in the late 1970s. Its modern, museological name was coined by Pierre Viala, the siteâÂÂs discoverer, owner and restorer at the time.
The word âÂÂBorieâ originates from an 18th-century place name â âÂÂLes BorrysâÂÂ, in the Bouches-du-Rhône département â that was mistakenly construed as meaning âÂÂdry stone hutâ by a mid 19th-century scholar. In the 1809 land register, the dry stone huts are referred to as âÂÂcabaneâ (when intact and still in use) and âÂÂsol de cabaneâ (when deserted and derelict) (see picture representing âÂÂLes Savournins Basâ in the Napoleonic land register).
The emergence of the outlying hamlet of âÂÂLes Savourninsâ dates back to a wide scale campaign of land clearing and cultivation that took place in 18th-century Provence, following a 1766 royal edict. The rush to the hills resulted in masses of stones being extracted from the ground to make way for new fields complete with dry stone walls and huts.
The potsherds found in the huts and fields during the restoration work of the 1970s are characteristic of the earthenware manufactured in the Apt, Vaucluse, region in the 18th-19th centuries.
The huts were built using locally extracted, 10 to 15 cm-thick, limestone slabs, going by the name of âÂÂlausesâ or âÂÂclapesâÂÂ.
Out of the 28 stone buildings still extant on the site,
The prevalence of the âÂÂGordoise naveâÂÂ, together with the use of mortarless masonry, lends the hamlet a certain architectural unity. .
Functionally, the âÂÂGordoise naveâ appears to have been a multi-purpose edifice used as seasonal dwelling, barn, grain store house, byre, sheep shelter, silkworm house, tool shed, treading house with vat.
The âÂÂVillage des Boriesâ comprises several âÂÂgroupsâ of âÂÂcabanesâ which are distributed across the areas North and South of a lane that runs through the site. A âÂÂgroupâ is to be seen as a reunion of two or more edifices, either abutting against, or adjoining, one another, or in proximity, usually round a small yard. It would be wrong, however, to think that each group belonged to a single family. A study of the Napoleonic and modern land registers has shown that some groups did belong to two separate owners or that the same person could own one building in a group and another building in another group.
The site also contains two threshing yards but no wells or water storage tanks (the nearest well, 100 metres away from the centre of the grouping, is dry).
Based on an analysis of the buildingsâ functions, the evidence provided by both land registers, the testimonies of Gordes villagers, and vestigial tree stumps, cereals (wheat, rye) were grown in the area in the 19th century, along with olive, almond and mulberry trees (the latter for silkworm rearing) and vines. There was also a cottage industry of leather sole making.
Also, some stone huts may have belonged to people living in a nearby village other than Gordes, a pattern that was not uncommon in the Provence of old.
The site was listed as a historic monument in 1977 and has been open to visitors for a fee ever since. Its current owner and manager is the Gordes municipality.