Toponymie | Canton de Potton | Place Names

It must be noted that this site is situated within the confines of fenced property, posted as Private.  As such, is not accessible without permission.  Potton Heritage is working to secure occasional public access to the entire site, which includes Potton rock and the “ mill », thus far without appreciable success (2012).

This site has been designated by Potton Heritage Association and by the Ministère de la Culture as an archeological heritage site.  The site has been formally studied by the latter.  The Jones site receives its name from the name of the original proprietor on which the site was found.  It is comprised of petroglyphs and the vestiges of a mill located in the Jones brook.  The entire site is located on the west side of Chemin du Lac, in Vale Perkins.

The architectural remains found at this site indicate the presence at one time of some type of mill, likely a sawmill.  All that remains are the very large slabs of the foundation.  The site includes remarkable petroglyphs etched into rock drifts found nearby, the most well known being “Indian rock” or “Potton rock”, located beside the Jones brook.  Unfortunately, time and exposure have now rendered the etchings nearly illegible.

Upstream in the brook are the vestiges of a dam, which must have once retained a certain reservoir of water.  The foundation walls below are made up of stone slabs of impressive dimension and size.  It appears that they were cleaved from the bedrock of the brook itself, since similar slabs still lie at brook side.  A sluiceway is obvious in the south wall, where likely the hydraulic wheel would have been located to generate the force necessary for a grinding wheel or to run a saw.  The construction of the mill has been judged to be in the 1855-1875 period.  The artefacts discovered around this site suggest pre-industrial rather than domestic use.  The makeup of the material suggests a very short use of the mill, less than 20 years.^[1]

Gérard Leduc, Ph. D., retired professor of Biology and amateur archaeologist, who has studied this area, disputes this assessment.  Based on carbon dating of two artefacts found at the Jones site, Leduc theorizes that construction was not ever completed and that the site dates to circa 1500^[2].  According to recognized archaeological standards and practices, this carbon dating is considered unacceptable as proof positive, by reason of the lack of contextual studies to accompany the tested sample.

A report commissioned by the Ministère de la Culture in 1993 and prepared by Société de recherche et de diffusion ARCHÉOBEC, concerned, for the greatest part, the mill site found in the brook.  It was there that the archaeological research was primarily conducted.  The report was silent as to the stone inscriptions of Potton Rock.  The dig at the site released few artefacts of importance, except for several pieces of crockery dating from the second half of the 19^th century and a metal button produced in the US within the same time frame.  The button was pivotal in the conclusions made, since it was located under one of the larger stone slabs.  The study concluded that, taken together, these artefacts are a good indication that the site was likely constructed between 1855 and 1875.

Interesting in this story, however, is the fact that no oral history exists of any mill having existed or operated at the Jones site.  Questions abound as to why the builders would have expended such energy to build a mill on a small brook that runs strongly in the springtime, but slows to a mere trickle in the summer!  Why were such massive stones used in this construction, when so many smaller ones were easily available?  And even more curiously, why does no one remember a mill ever being constructed or used there?

For more information on this site, see notes under Pierre celtique de Potton.