Tuffeau stone and Troglodytes

The tuffeau is this clear and soft limestone that gave their whiteness to all the chateaux of the Loire. It is easy to extract, which has left all these tunnels, caves and troglodyte sites on our slopes and in our soils. Here, the terroir, the buildings, the wines, are marked by this stone.

A limestone sedimentary stone, tufeau stone offers good mechanical properties for builders and this since the dawn of time.
Digging to build, this is how the perreyeux, (the vernacular name given to people who worked in quarries) shaped an entire underground world for centuries and centuries to extract from the bowels of the earth this rock necessary for construction.
It is easy to imagine, looking at our extraordinary architectural heritage, what our region's subsoil may look like. Cavities here, quarries there, as much emptiness underground as full on the surface.
A remarkable adventure between man and nature that will shape our region over the centuries. After the sudden stop of the underground extraction of the stone, due to the arrival of new materials, much less noble, such as the breeze block, many of these cavities will not be exploited any more for the extraction of the stone. but will be used for other useful purposes such as mushroom cultivation.
Digging to sleep and live there is a strange conception of housing and yet it is indeed "at home" in Touraine that we find these curious dwellings called "Troglodytiques", or more commonly Troglos. Make no mistake about it, we do not live any more in a troglodyte because we don't afford a classic house, but by choice, these are warm dwellings in winter and cool in summer, they are perfect cozy nests to recharge your batteries.
Wouldn't the Troglo be a building alternative in the face of global warming? Living in a troglodyte has become a quest for some to get closer to nature and for the electrosensitive an ideal refuge. Today living in a troglodyte rhymes with ecology and the art of living.