The oven was built from granite and shale stones bonded with local clay. It sits on a slab of clay, and its walls are one metre thick and one metre high. Circular in shape, it supported a large copper cauldron in which the blubber was placed to be melted. The fire underneath had to be constantly stoked. A wooden structure topped the whole oven to protect it.
On returning from their whale hunt, once the animal had been towed into the cove and hauled as far as possible ashore, the Basques had plenty of work to do. First, the whale had to be butchered. Then the blubber, which was very heavy, had to be cut into pieces so that it could be transported to a nearby oven. Don’t forget that a whale measuring almost 20 metres in length can weigh between 40 and 50 tonnes!
Source : shgtp.org
Illustration credit : Léopold d'Amours