Salt Spring

The development visible today around the spring already existed in 1732, when a price-fixed repair was passed by the consuls of Tartonne to the mason of Clumanc Honoré Giraud. He had to demolish and rebuild identically the north and west walls, raise all the walls to reduce the slope, render them and cover the building with flagstone. The Dictionnaire d'Achard, published in 1788, describes the salt spring as a well containing a large wooden vat and equipped with two locks, the keys of which were kept, one by the consuls of Tartonne and the other by the farmers of the royal salt tax. The well filled in 24 hours and the water was distributed to the inhabitants every 8 days in summer, every 15 days in winter. The abolition of the royal monopoly put an end to this practice. The 1837 cadastral map shows, with the mention Fontaine salée, a small public building located in the bed of the Salaou torrent and bordered on the south side by a dike. The building, which was restored after its registration in 1993, is now preserved only as a curiosity and a testimony to the past.
The well, with its formwork made of square planks, is sheltered under a small square building with a full-arched barrel vault and no roof. The rough rubble block elevations are blind, except to the south where the door with a monolithic lintel and a mouth for the passage of the monolithic pipe which serves as an overflow open. Very close to the bed of the Salaou torrent, the well is protected from flooding by an earth dike faced with rough rubble.

source: General inventory of cultural heritage of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region