Perforated bricks in Bavay, tokens of a forgotten XVIIth century brewery

One found in Bavay, in the 1960s, both fragments of tiles punched with cone -shaped holes and fragments of earthenware displaying evenly spaced cells. The ill-defined circumstances of these findings, confused and ill-assured i nterpretations made that these artifacts remained mysterious. Were we just dealing with Gallic or Gallo-Roman coin moulds? A thorough bibliographical research, with some field work, finally shed a partial light on this issue. The perforated elements are the remains of the tiling of the drying yard o f a malt-house. In Bavay, this latter belonged to the brewery of the Orator ian college erected in the XVIIth century on what had been the north-east c orner of the Roman basilica.