Groix - Boucle (Loop) 3 - Trou de l'enfer Saint-Nicolas

With its covered market and shops, the town merits a wander through its coloured streets.  The parish church, devoted to the Breton saint Tudy, dates from the 17th century and was considerably renovated in around 1850. The top of the bell tower sports a tuna-shaped wind vane, marking the influence of tuna fishing on the island. Numerous ex-votos, in the form of suspended model tunnyboats, are also exhibited. The war memorial with its navy fusilier and 174 names engraved on it is a reminder of the heavy price paid by the islanders in the Great War.

For a long time, isolated in the middle of nature, this chapel was a symbolic place of worship for fishermen. A huge service was celebrated here at the end of June for the departure of tuna fishing season. During the Revolution, the chapel was used as a barracks, and then became the island’s first boys’ school in 1827. Completely rebuilt in the shape of a Latin cross in 1894, it sits apart from other chapels with its neo-gothic style.

In the 12th century, only the eastern part of the island was inhabited (Locmaria, Lomener, Loctudy), known as the “Primiture”. Little by little, families were sent to cultivate the rest of the island, to the west or “Piwisy”. A document from 1388 details the new farms that eventually became villages: Kerlard, Kervedan, KerampouloIt is said that people in Piwisi spoke “gravelec”, a more rustic language. In Primiture, for a long time under ecclesiastical tutelage, people spoke in a more sophisticated way. Elder Groix inhabitants say, “I've known a few boys from the other side who only spoke French, polluted with Breton words. In the eyes of the village children, they were considered backward.”Life is also easier on the east side of the island, with its plentiful ports and coves, and it grew with the Locmaria fisheries in the 13th century, followed by the Port-Tudy sardine press in 1670. The west was only developed later with tarmac roads and electricity.So, the idea of two societies took root: one more peasant and rural in Piwisi, the other more maritime and wealthier in Primiture. But men were sailors in both Primiture and Piwisi. And women worked the land wherever they were.

If most men were once sailors, women were farmers. After the consolidation of 1950, the island changed its landscape but it still retains, here and there, the vestiges of its astonishing parcelling. Indeed, the operating unit was then the "furrow", constituting a strip of land 3 to 4 meters wide, all in length and representing a hundred m2.   The furrows were grouped by crop type, mainly wheat, barley, oats, and potatoes.

Steep cliffs and deep cave with sound during storms; according to legend, housed a sea monster with the head of a man who organized bacchanalia there.

Situated near the coast, the Fontenar washhouse was built towards the end of the 19th century. This source of fresh water was once precious to its inhabitants. Fitted out with a fountain and rectangular stone washhouse, it is now surrounded by vegetation. It is also home to the southern damselfly, a protected dragonfly of community interest in this Natura 2000 site.

Natural port in the talweg surrounded by cliffs.

One of the many springs on the island that supplied water to the villagers

Fountain and washhouse formerly used by the inhabitants of Quehello

This hamlet houses traditional stone houses of the 18th and 19th centuries and more recent constructions.

Neolithic menhir, height of 5.80 m.

Other fountain set lavoir.