Plouay Circuit from Manehouarn to Coët Fao

The Manehouarn estate is the seat of the ancient seigneury of the de Pluvié family, who settled here as early as the 16th century. The parish bought the site in 1985. Its various buildings include gîtes, apartments, seminar rooms and reception halls. Numerous festive, sporting and cultural events are held here throughout the year. As you make your way through the wooded park, you'll come across, on your right, the 19th century fountain-washhouse complex set on an 18th century fishpond, further on, the 19th and 20th century ponds, the former 19th century kennels, the 1758 recreational chateau, extended after 1840, the Notre Dame de Sion chapel, the former stables and carriage houses in the courtyard, built at the same time as the château. To find out more about the history of the estate, download the “Plouay Five Hundred years of history at Manéhouarn” cultural trail from the Rando Bretagne Sud application.

Planted and developed around 1792, the Alley Neuve became the new access road to Manehouarn Castle in the 19th century. Long and majestic, it was entered in 1843 from the east by the "royal road number 169 from Lorient to Roscoff". The estate, surrounded by high stone walls, can be accessed through the current entrance, still bounded by two columns, only one of which has kept its lion. A small house, now destroyed, was used by the guardian who checked comings and goings and handled the heavy gates. Manehouarn was not open to everyone and already in 1792, the tenant farmer at La Porte was obliged to take care of the guard dogs by keeping them attached "from sunrise to sunset". On the left, through the trees, you can see the Métairie Neuve, now known as Coët Fao, the beechwood. It is likely that the château's tenant farm was excluded from the estate during the first quarter of the 19th century. In 1843, it included a set of buildings with courtyards and farmland called new parcels, or park nevez in Breton.

Overlooking Plouay, the recreational chateau, completed in 1758, was built on a manor house dating back to the 16th century. Characteristic with its large symmetrical bays opening onto the park, it is flanked by two side wings and a pediment, added around 1840. The de Pluvié coat of arms “Chevron or on sable, accompanied by three roses of the same colour” can be seen on it. The interiors, with lounges, dining rooms and kitchens on the first floor and bedrooms on the upper floors, were once richly decorated and furnished, reflecting the lifestyle of the nobility. Discover the most illustrious members of the de Pluvié family thanks to the lecterns installed near the gates at the exit to the courtyard.

After the 1987 storm, the site was devastated. The local authority restored the large lake dug by the de Pluvié family at the beginning of the 20th century, and created two smaller ones upstream, mainly fed by the Fetan er Hoc spring now under water. These ornamental lakes are popular with fishermen. The largest of them offers the most experienced the opportunity to catch pike, tench and carp. The two smaller ones have been designed to allow the younger ones to learn how to fish roaches and rainbow trout. 

Coët Fao wood once belonged to the Manehouarn seigneury. This beech wood, as its Breton name suggests, is home not only to Breton forest species, but also to pine trees, descendants of the plantations put here by the de Pluvié family. This pine forest covered almost 20 hectares in 1843. The species, introduced to Brittany in the 17th century, saw its production intensify in the 19th century with the manufacture of posts for the English coalmines, exported from the port of Lorient. Cut rapidly every 25 years, they offered landowners a good return.  Today, the public part of the wood, comprising 61 hectares, is managed by the Office National des Forêts, which is responsible for felling and planting trees. There are plenty of paths which are ideal for walking.

On your left, lower down, you can see the Stang Philippe fountain. The origin of its name is unknown, but it already appears as such on Plouay's 1843 Napoleonic land registry. To facilitate access to the water, the spring has been landscaped with a rectangular basin bordered by ashlar. One of these stones is topped by a triangular stone in which a small niche has been carved. The overflow drains through a notch in the stone into the Kerscoulic stream. Once located in the middle of the meadows, before the railway was built, this domestic fountain was intended to serve the local population and their livestock.

The Plouay cross was moved, and then stored in the Technical Services Department, until it was reinstated at the end of 2024 in its original location as shown on the 1843 Napoleonic cadastre. The uncut granite base and the monolithic cross, with its irregular, asymmetrical shapes and no ornamentation, attest to the age of this monument, which was probably built in the early Middle Ages, between the 12th and 15th centuries, to mark a significant event or to announce arrival in the town of Plouay.  A second square hole in the base signals that this was a double cross, fairly common in the Morbihan. The second cross has long since disappeared. In the first half of the 20th century, the inhabitants of Plouay from the surrounding villages would pass by on their way to school and say a prayer. They only ever knew the monument in this form.

Up the hill in Coet Fao woods, you can still see the circular base of a windmill registered on the 1843 Napoleonic land registry as “Moulin à vent de la Rue Neuve”. Owned by the de Pluvié de Manehouarn family, holders of the Rue Neuve seigneury under the Ancien Régime, it was one of three mills on the Rue Neuve. The other two were located further down the hill along the Malachappe stream. Using the power of wind and water, they operated mechanisms for milling grain and sawing wood. This combination of water and windmills was not uncommon during the Ancien Régime, as the Napoleonic land registry shows: they can be found in all the surrounding townlands. The Château de Kerdrého in Plouay also had a windmill associated with its water mill. Windmills were less numerous and were probably abandoned very early on. Most of them have now disappeared.

Bordered by the old railroad line, the village of Coët Fao is relatively recent. Its houses were built by the de Pluvié family. In 1843, it included a set of buildings with courtyards and farmland called new parcels, or park nevez in Breton. Called Métairie Neuve at the time, it replaced the noble métairie de la Porte, formerly located near the manor house and removed to allow the estate to be redeveloped in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

Plouay is known for its lively markets and shops, and has been an active market centre since the 13th century. Don't miss the opportunity to stroll through its streets. The church of Saint-Ouen, built in the 15th century, has three altarpieces; the first one in tufa stone and marble, built during the reconstruction of the choir in 1717, the other two in tufa stone, decorate the sides of the choir, dedicated to the Virgin and the Sacred Heart. Plouay was also the seat of the high justice of the Lordship of Pontkalleg, located in Berné. At the corner of the Place de l'Eglise and the Rue de Bécherel, admire the oldest house in the village, dating from 1594. To its right, under the Ancien Régime, stood the prison and the market hall; the latter housed a courtroom on the upper floor where judgments were handed down every Monday—market day. Punishments ranged from the pillory to imprisonment and, in the most serious cases, the death penalty. Executions took place just outside Plouay on a rise known as Lann Justice, the site of the Lordship’s justice pillars and gallows.