The village of Trélans in the Aubrac mountains
Trélans is a commune located on the Aubrac mountains and its foothills. The town covers 23.4 km², for a hundred inhabitants named the Trélandais. The highest point in Aubrac is north of this territory: the Mailhebiau signal. Trélans is crossed by numerous streams, the main ones being Le Bès and Caldeyrac.
In the Middle Ages until the end of the revolution, the commune of Trélans was part, with Saint-Pierre de Nogaret and Saint-Germain du Teil, of "Nogaret’s Mandate", attached to the crown of the king of France in 1258. Composed of small cultivated plateaus and heavily boxed valleys where dwellings were only accessible by narrow paths, it thus constituted an almost impregnable territory by invaders. It therefore had an important defensive function, allowing controlling the circulation axes from Rouergue and the hinterland to the Lot river Valley.
Aubrac’s Domerie (Monastery) and the monastic barn of Plagnes
In Plagnes you can see a monastic barn of the "Domerie d'Aubrac", a former monastery located in the village of Aubrac. It was founded between 1108 and 1125 by the abbey of Conques on the initiative of Adalard, a Flemish lord who almost died on the plateau during his pilgrimage to Santiago of Compostela. Destined to host pilgrims heading for Santiago of Compostela and crossing the plateau thanks to the Via Podiensis, the monastery gradually detached itself from the control of the Sainte-Foy de Conques abbey to take on capital importance on the Aubrac. It counted up to 120 brothers and 30 sisters, as well as knights for protection, and once welcomed a thousand people a day! To provide everyone with this free welcome, it owned many lands in Aveyron and Lozère, which it exploited through breeding. As a matter of fact, it was the monks who shaped the Aubrac landscape as we know it today, by clearing huge areas to graze for their herds. It is also this model of agro-pastoralism that we find today on the plateau. The Domerie d'Aubrac owned several monastic barns. One of these barns can be found in Plagnes, which was one of the three most important barns of the monastery and constitutes a real hamlet.