Houguemont

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Historic Jersey buildings


Houguemont, St Martin


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Property name

Houguemont

Location

Rue d'Aval

Type of property

Country house with 16th century origins. Now divided into three flats.

Families associated with the property

  • Mallet: A branch of the Mallet family owned this property from the 17th until the late 19th century. Many added their names to those already engraved on the chimney, although these are no longer all legible (see below). Between 1816 and 1840, eleven children were born here to Philippe Mallet and Susanne Renouf, his wife. Two of these died in childhood but of the remaining nine children, only two married, and it is uncertain whether either of these had, in their turn, any children. In that generation, two of the boys, including the eldest, farmed, whilst three were shipwrights. As the latter were mostly living at home at the time of the various censuses, they are likely to have worked `at the bottom of the hill` in the Gorey shipyards. The farm consisted, in 1871, of 42 vergées.
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Datestones

  • GCLQ AHI / IMAP / D♥♥PL / RAM ARA / MDDM ON / PM 1781 / PMPI / IPML IPML / PML - These initials all appear on one chimney. The oblique strokes here show how the sets of initials are separated line by line. They are described in Old Jersey Houses as a pedigree of the Mallet family, and this is how they have been interpreted in the Jersey Datestone Register, which, like the book's author, makes no attempt to decipher them. It is difficult to read some of the initials in the photograph in Volume 2 of the book or the HER photograph reproduced here. [1]






Historic Environment Record entry

Listed building

An important example of a circa 1600 house retaining original features and character, including a fine double voussoir doorway and unique inscribed 18th century chimney.

House circa 1600 origins, with 18th and 19th century alterations. Principally 19th century outbuildings. Shown on the Richmond Map of 1795.

Slate roof, thatched until at least 1900. Two granite chimneys, one on east gable has a sundial attached to it, one on west gable is later stone ashlar with rim and unusually inscribed with initials and dated 1781 (said to be a family tree).

Various later subsidiary outbuildings forming yard to south of house add to farmstead character.

Old Jersey Houses

Despite the antiquity and importance of this property it merits only the most cursory of entries in each of the two volumes. Misprints in the index of each volume place the house in St John and Grouville, but it is correctly identified as being in St Martin in the text entries.

"This house was recently repaired and repointed [2] and now looks most handsome. The round arch of the double voussoir type has apparently been heightened by the ground floor in front being dug out, exposing the foundation level."


Notes and references

  1. We think the description of these engravings as a pedigree of the Mallet family is an oversimplification. It is by no means clear whether the engravings represent an historical sequence from top to bottom. The first line may well refer to George Corbel Le Quesne, the only person we can find in church records who would be represented by GCLQ. He was born in St John in 1876 and we cannot find any marriage in Jersey records to a female with the initials AHI. An online tree suggests that he emigrated to Canada and married Alberta Le Marquand there in 1904. It is, of course, possible that he was married before this in Jersey. Working down the engravings, we believe that the initials before the 1781 date could be FM, not PM, and refer to Feley Mallet, who was born in Grouville in that year. However, this is all supposition and we are trying to obtain a clearer photograph of this unique chimney before making a further attempt to decipher what its carvings stand for
  2. 1960s
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