Glossary entry

French term or phrase:

(maison) meulière

English translation:

millstone grit/gritstone (house)

Added to glossary by Chanda Danley
Mar 17, 2007 17:08
17 yrs ago
3 viewers *
French term

mauliere

French to English Tech/Engineering Real Estate Type of Construction
Type de construction. Construction: Mauliere

No further context other than from a real estate website.

Thanks in advance.
Proposed translations (English)
3 +2 millstone grit (type of sandstone)
4 +3 =meulière = flint

Discussion

Chanda Danley (asker) Mar 17, 2007:
It certainly could be a mistake I guess...thanks for your help
katsy Mar 17, 2007:
Could it be 'meulière'? type of stone translated in my dictionary as 'millstone grit', but I don't know this field. Meulière is often seen in ads for houses though

Proposed translations

+2
5 hrs
Selected

millstone grit (type of sandstone)

As katsy pointed, the real UK cultural equivalent, based on what the similar siliceous rock deposits in Britain have long been called, seems to be "millstone grit". Not quite the same stuff as the black flint rocks that crystallised within the vast chalk deposit underlying a good part of France and Britain and now tumble onto the beaches as the white cliffs erode. But all made mostly of silica.

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Note added at 1 day15 hrs (2007-03-19 08:12:20 GMT)
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Looks we could all be wrong about pierre meulière. The siliceous rock for which France is famous for its use in *composite* grindstones, reputed to be the best for grinding flour, is known as "French burr" in English. It is a type of chert, which is very like flint (some say, _is_ flint; others say, flint forms only in chalk deposits, chert is formed in a different way). Neither flint nor chert can be cut easily into regular building blocks. Monolithic millstones had to be made from "gritstone", a hard sandstone. So what do you have in your house, Alex -- flint or chert? Or conglomerate?

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Note added at 1 day15 hrs (2007-03-19 08:19:36 GMT)
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See http://www.whitemill.org/z0013.htm
Note from asker:
Thanks for all of your help and information. After looking around, I have to say, I'm still not thoroughly convinced there is one single term for this...seems no one really can decide as you find brick/flint houses, but rarely just flint houses listed on French real estate pages and they look the same as the gritstone and millstone houses that are also listed on French real estate pages...I'm going to go with the cultural equivalent as the idea is to get foreigners to buy the property....thanks again!
Peer comment(s):

agree Julie Barber : after having had a good look around, it seems to me to be the general term
16 hrs
agree jean-jacques alexandre : to me too
1 day 11 hrs
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4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millstone_grit http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Millstone_grit&redirect=no http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandstone A flinstone home??? That sounds like it's in Bedrock and Fred and Barney will be your neighbors. :) There are hits for flint/brick houses...millstone grit houses, gritstone houses, and sandstone houses, but after looking the latter one is different I think. The 'official' book translations: sandstone is 'grès', flint is 'silex' and millstone grit is 'meulière'...so what do I do? I'll have to go with what would sound best in the US - the target audience -"
+3
8 mins

=meulière = flint

The bottom part (soubassement) of my house is made of it. There's a lot of it in the region, and I am currently collecting it off nearby fields to make borders round my flower beds.

See http://www.proz.com/kudoz/850313

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Note added at 4 hrs (2007-03-17 21:47:51 GMT)
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Rkillings is right to a great extent. The (type of?) "pierre meulière" used for house building looks nothing like what we commonly accept as flint. So calling a "maison en meulière" a "flint house" IS like calling a drink composed essentially of sugar and water an "orange drink" or a pie composed essentially of potato and fat a "meat pie". But that's the way the world is.

Add to that the fact that "pierre meulière" is largely confined to a particular part of France, so that its exact equivalent is prob. unheard of in other places. On the other hand, flint is (or was) used for houses in other places (indeed, in my own, the external walls above the "meulière" part are flint embedded in mortar and rendered over). And "pierre meulière" IS a kind of flint, apparently, even if it doesn't look like it. So "flint house", while not necessarily as exact as "house built with pierre meulière stone", might be seen as a "cultural equivalent".

http://www.monanneeaucollege.com/minerauxpages/silex-meulier...

Par le terme « silex », on entend une famille plutôt nombreuse d’espèces minérales. Le constituant fondamental de ces roches est la silice. Beaucoup d’entre elles ont une origine purement minérale ; d’autres sont de nature organique. Le silex offre un certain nombre de variétés qui sont : le silex pyromaque ou pierre à fusil ; le silex corné ou hornstein; le silex noir ou phtanite, très commun dans le calcaire carbonifère ; le silex molaire ou meulière, développé dans le Bassin parisien ; le silex xyloïde ou bois silicifié.
http://pages.videotron.com/silex/mainframesilex.htm

Des bancs affleurants de pierre meulière (assimilable à une sorte de silex) furent également exploités dès le XIIe siècle sous diverses formes. ...
fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Épernon –

Les meules de nos moulins mesuraient couramment 1,10 ou 1,20 mètre de diamètre, pour un poids de l'ordre de 250 kilogrammes. Elles étaient faites d'une variété particulière de meulière : le silex meulier. Les meilleures pierres venaient de la Brie et celles des carrières de La Ferté sous Jouarre étaient très appréciées.
http://32 32.cicv.fr/communes/champvou/pages/patrimoi.htm

Picture of " Meulière caverneuse" at http://www.teaser.fr/~gvanderrest/bcpst/docs/TP/petro.html

La meilleure est une variété de silex, constitué par de la silice, connue sous le nom de silex meunier, ou plus simplement de meulière. Il existe des gisements dans beaucoup de pays d'Europe et d'Amérique, mais la France en est particulièrement bien dotée. Le gisement le plus important est celui de la Ferté-sous-Jouarre. On en trouve aussi dans la Marne, à Montmirail et Épernay, à Épernon, dans l'Eure-et-Loir, à Lésigny dans la Vienne, à Bergerac en Dordogne, et à Saint-Mars-la-Pile en Indre-et-Loire. On trouve aussi des pierres dans l'Yonne, l'Eure, les Deux-Sèvres
http://www.moulinsdefrance.org/old/meule_a.html




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Note added at 4 hrs (2007-03-17 21:50:26 GMT)
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As for "millstone", personally I've never encountered the expression in connection with construction, and were I to have before learning French, I would probably have imagined a house built of disused millers' ... make that millers' disused millstones. Then again, a "millstone house" might be one that requires more money to maintain it than it is worth ...

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Note added at 4 hrs (2007-03-17 22:01:14 GMT)
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Maisons meulières (different kinds, actually):
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.feau-immob...
http://www.focusfrance.com/clients/imageup/12810-1.jpg
http://www.arche-immobilier-montargis.com/immobilier/photos/...
http://www.arche-immobilier-montargis.com/immobilier/photos/...

Flint houses:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.wallingfor...

http://www.concentric.net/~Djfrench/P_Houses/flinthouse.jpg
gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/minerals/flint5.jpg
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.periodprop...

Maybe "brown stone house" would do.


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Note added at 17 hrs (2007-03-18 10:11:05 GMT)
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For me, "millstone grit" is the technical equivalent. Everyone in France knows what a "maison meulière" is built with, but I remain to be convinced that everyone in the UK knows what a "millstone grit house" is. I wonder how many people would think it was some sort of outbuilding where a miller stored grit for improving the efficiency of his millstones ... With "flint house" one immediately has a mind's-eye picture of the house, and knows it is not timber or brick or concrete or granite, that it is a brown (and white and black, possibly) stone. THere may be cases where strict technical accuracy is called for, however.

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Note added at 17 hrs (2007-03-18 10:19:12 GMT)
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Apart from anything, "maison meulière" is not as much a description of what the house is built with as it is an indication of prestige, aesthetics, and construction quality, in much the same way "Georgian stone" (albeit 50-100 years earlier) talks more about a buyer's social aspirations than about what a house is made of. What best captures this notion in English, for the period concerned, I don't know.
Note from asker:
so, now I'm confused as it's also translated as millstone which is also used in construction...
Thanks for all of your help and information. After looking around, I have to say, I'm still not thoroughly convinced there is one single term for this...seems no one really can decide as you find brick/flint houses, but rarely just flint houses listed on French real estate pages and they look the same as the gritstone and millstone houses that are also listed on French real estate pages...I'm going to go with the cultural equivalent as the idea is to get foreigners to buy the property....thanks again!
Thanks for all of your help and information. After looking around, I have to say, I'm still not thoroughly convinced there is one single term for this...seems no one really can decide as you find brick/flint houses, but rarely just flint houses listed on French real estate pages and they look the same as the gritstone and millstone houses that are also listed on French real estate pages...I'm going to go with the cultural equivalent as the idea is to get foreigners to buy the property....thanks again!
Peer comment(s):

agree Jacqui Audouy : Thought you lived in Greenland though
1 min
I DO live in Greenland, in a way! So I have an igloo on a stone foundation ;-)
agree kironne : yup
4 mins
agree Vicky Papaprodromou
1 hr
neutral rkillings : Bourth, is it really flint (=silex), or is it mostly a sandstone matrix with a high content of hard flint particles?
3 hrs
Yes and no (I do live in Normandy, after all): see above.
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