Until the 19th century, Saint-Zacharie's ceramics industry played a key role in supplying the Midi region and the colonies beyond.
The most spectacular example is the recently restored battery of four flame kilns.
Impressive in size (between 5.20 and 5.80 m high, around 7 m wide and 8.65 m long), these buildings have a very simple internal structure. A single cooking chamber above the fireplaces is built of rubble stone lined with heavily reinforced bricks.
The vaults and tiles are built of thin mallons mounted on hangers. These elevations are complemented by two firing chambers, with access corridors and fireplaces, each supplying coal to a furnace.
This arrangement is both the last witness to the industrial past that shaped Saint-Zacharie's identity, and the last visible evidence in France, to our knowledge, of this type of installation, which probably dates from the end of the 19th century.
The most spectacular example is the recently restored battery of four flame kilns.
Impressive in size (between 5.20 and 5.80 m high, around 7 m wide and 8.65 m long), these buildings have a very simple internal structure. A single cooking chamber above the fireplaces is built of rubble stone lined with heavily reinforced bricks.
The vaults and tiles are built of thin mallons mounted on hangers. These elevations are complemented by two firing chambers, with access corridors and fireplaces, each supplying coal to a furnace.
This arrangement is both the last witness to the industrial past that shaped Saint-Zacharie's identity, and the last visible evidence in France, to our knowledge, of this type of installation, which probably dates from the end of the 19th century.
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