Nantes No. 1

Corblet (1881-1882) reports that the ruins of an old baptistery were discovered during works in the site of the old cathedral of Nantes and gives the description published by the abbé Cahour: an exterior wall of a circular platform with a diameter of 3m 60cm, in whose centre opened a sunken octagonal basin with three brick steps of about 20-21cm each; the steps went around all of the interior of the octagon and there were traces that they they had been lined in the past; at the bottom of the steps there was a cavity, about 40 x 40 cm square and 9 cm in depth. This cavity was crossed by a drain about 8 cm deep and 10 cm wide; prospections carried out later discovered two lead pipes: the one on the north side had served to feed water into the basin, whereas the one on the south side had served to evacuate it through a hole in one of the paving slabs. The bottom of the basin was made of a concrete composed of grounded brick and served as the basis for the broken paving slabs which covered it. (a/p abbé Cahour's description in Corblet, 1881-1882, v. 2, p. 69)