United States or Aruba ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is at Peyrousse in the Rouergue, in the department of Aveyron. Peyrousse is a village, but was once a fortified town on a height, with its church and church tower standing on the highest point and visible from a great distance. It rises above a deep valley or ravine. The houses are all old, and many of them in ruins.
Projecting from the side of the hill on which stands Peyrousse, partly attached to it, but for the most part detached, is a ridge of schist starting 300 feet above the stream below, in one sheer precipice, and precipitous on every side. It is perhaps 300 feet long, and rises like a blade of an axe; at each extremity of this ridge is a lofty tower one, the farthest, open at the side.
I endeavoured with a glass to see whether notches had been hacked in the schist to receive stays, and others on the ridge to accommodate joists, but could distinguish none. Peyrousse became a Calvinist stronghold in the Wars of Religion, when the churches were destroyed; but the Huguenots made no attempt to climb the Tailor's Rocks and restore the castle.
At the foot of the crags are the remains of the chapel of the garrison. How did they descend to it and mount again? I presume by a knotted rope. A cliff castle that bears a curious resemblance to Peyrousse is Trosky, in Bohemia, but in this latter case the rocks are of basalt, and between the two towers the connecting rock forms a deep depression.
The tradition is, that when the English quitted Peyrousse they destroyed the means of ascent, and since 1443 no human being has been able to climb the rock and visit the towers, that for nearly five hundred years have had no other denizens than ravens and jackdaws. But that is not all the puzzle of the Tailor's Rock. It is supposed that there was a wooden castle between the towers.
Word Of The Day