by the Benedictine monks of Sarlat", a proof of this being a sale deed of "1449, the earliest written trace testifying to their presence". However, the alleged deed remains unpublished and its whereabouts and content are unknown. Besides, Calpalmas is a different place from Le Breuil. In the book "Les cabanes en pierre sèche du Périgord" (The Dry Stone Huts of Périgord) published in 2002 (see Bibliography), the author states that "Le Breuil was once a possession of the Benedictines in the Chapter of Sarlat Bishopric, but nowhere is there any mention that the stone huts we see today already existed." He adds: "Twenty years ago, the landlady used to boast that the stone huts had been built or entirely rebuilt by her grandfather, at the beginning of the 20th century." Again, according to the Cabanes du Breuil's website, rural craftsmen - a blacksmith, a harness maker and a weaver - are said to have rented some of the huts in order to practise their craft, an assertion that is not borne out by any textual document. In the hut supposedly used by a blacksmith, a pair of bellows sits prominently outside a small hearth. A postcard from the 1970s shows the same building being used as a sheepfold: a dozen sheep are seen leaving it under the guidance of the then farmer and his wife. Another hut was endowed with a faux chimney piece in 1988 so as to display utensils that belonged to the grandparents of the farm's present-day owners. Layout of the Buildings A row of five huts arranged in an arc of circle line the uphill side of the farm: The first two huts are in fact one and the same building (presumably a hay store), of a rectangular ground plan with rounded corners; a smaller, circular hut abuts its far end; as all three roofs are connected by a curving ridge, one gets the impression of a single structure with threefold roofing. The next two huts are set at right angles to each other, the first one abutting on to the gable wall of the bake house, the second one leaning against the latter's side wall (the bake house is a small building with a two-sided roof clad in stone tiles, standing against the farmhouse's gable wall). A group of two conjoined huts, whose roofs are attached to each other, stands parallel to the first