Millstones from Banges

The history of these stones dates back to the 14th century.

In 1337, they were already being exploited at a place called "Planfay", near Banges. Thus, on October 23, 1712, a paper signed by "Spectacle Hugues BAST...", lawyer at the Senate, bourgeois of Chambéry and Cl. DEL'HOPITAL, clerk at the "banc à sel". "We will have 50 millstones brought down to the Mollières "giet" (corridor) by Jean DELALLIER-GOLLET and Joseph CUSIN-MERMET, and in order for the stones to reach the Mollières "giet" sooner, the said sieur DEL'HOPITAL will provide the rope to facilitate their descent. In 1823, the Planfay quarry was still in operation, but stone extraction was difficult due to the nearby precipices, which forced the stones to be lowered to Les Mollières. The quarry site overlooks steep cliffs. The millstones were slid down to Les Mollières and, there, loaded onto a cart fitted with a wooden axle, transported, some of them, as far as Turin. It is likely that the name Les Mollières, like the family name MOLLIER (from Ugine) formerly pronounced MOLLIERE, both derive from these millstones, quarried by the MOLLIER family.
Several generations of the MOLLIER-BOCHOZ family quarried at Banges, at the crossroads of the route d'Héry and the new route de Banges, at a place called "Pierre Coquin".
Before 1914, there was only one millstone and "basté" cutter in the village, named FIDELE, of Italian origin.
In a scree slope on the Planfay quarry in Banges, large stone wheels were extracted from the mountainside, which were none other than the famous millstones used in the mills of yesteryear.
The workers of the time, probably "day laborers", by hard labor, selected from a rock having the appearance of a perfect conglomerate and the dimensions of the millstone to be extracted. Once the axis of the future millstone had been drilled through the center of the shapeless block, the wheel had to be cut from the outside and finally "peeled off". Numerous holes were drilled all around the periphery of the wheel (visible in the photo), the man used wooden wedges and, with water to make them swell, after a few days the millstone would come loose from its block".