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Origin and history

The Dolmen de la Grotte aux Fées, also known as Dolmen de Metlay, is a megalithic monument located in Saint-Antoine-du-Rocher, in Indre-et-Loire. Built between 2500 and 2000 BC, it is the most spectacular megalith in the department, with a 10-metre-long burial chamber covered with three colossal slabs. Its name evokes a local legend according to which three fairies would have built in one night.

Dolmen was first mentioned in 1805 in Celtic Monuments of Cambry. In 1865, the Archaeological Society of Touraine considered excavations, but the project did not succeed. In 1910, Joseph Gaurichon conducted surveys and discovered bones, polished flints (including an axe of import) and fragments of pottery, now missing. The monument was listed as a Historic Monument in 1914, and its site was listed in 1943.

The structure, of angevin type, is 11 meters long for 4.50 meters wide and 3 meters high. The funerary chamber, segmented by a transverse slab formerly used as a polisher, was probably covered with a tumulus of which only a residual platform remains. The slabs, in white sandstone and puddingue, weigh up to 65 tons. In the 1980s, consolidation work was carried out to stabilize orthostats, weakened by fires lit inside.

Legends persist around the dolmen: anyone moving his stones could die in the year, and the fairies would have chosen their home there. The monument could be linked to three other missing megaliths (one dolmen and two menhirs), forming a megalithic system of which it would be the central element.

The dolmen is now owned by the commune of Saint-Antoine-du-Rocher. Its state of conservation, despite the degradations (vandalism in the 1960s, repeated fires), makes it a major testimony of neolithic funeral architecture in Touraine.

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