Écomusée de la Tuilerie de Pouligny
A tile works from 1830, still on its original site
Founded in 1830, closed in 1962. The kilns, the buildings and the tools remained. The site became an ecomuseum in 2002, with pottery workshops.
A hundred and thirty-two years of making tiles and bricks, from 1830 to 1962. Mechanised in 1920 with a moulding machine, a grinder and a diesel engine, electrified in 1936. Its peak came in the 1950s.
Then abandonment, and twenty years of brambles. The commune of Chéniers began restoration in 1995, a work-integration programme carried it through from 1998 to 2002, and the ecomuseum opened in July 2002.
You see here what is almost never seen: the tilemaker's kilns and the potter's kilns still in place, in the original 19th-century buildings. And collections of tiles, bricks, pottery, and ridge finials.
This is not a dead site: there are throwing workshops, high-temperature firings, and a potters' market every summer.
Open from April to October, mostly in the afternoon. Five euros fifty.