La Fontaine, St B
Historic Jersey buildings
 Senior politician Ralph Vibert at home at La Fontaine in 1979, with his grandson, on the bench showing in the picture of the house to the left
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Property name
La Fontaine
Other names
La Fontaine Farm
Location
Route du Francfief, St Brelade
Type of property
Georgian style mid-19th century house
Valuations
The property, including a substantial area of land, sold a year after the death in 2008 of owner Ralph Vibert for £4 million - a remarkable price at the time for a property of this size
Families associated with the property
From the mid-19th century La Fontaine, which had not been given the name until some time in the 1870s, passed through one family, but nearly every time through the female line.
- Horman: Although the property had probably not been named La Fontaine by then, in 1871 it was owned by retired farmer Jacques Horman (1790- ), who lived there with his wife Marie, nee Du Val, and their granddaughter Julia Le Gresley. A separate household consisted of their son Jacques (1814- ), his wife Eliza, and their children Jacques and Elizabeth . Jacques is recorded in the 1871 census as a farmer of 12 acres. [1]. For some reason Jacques jnr did not inherit what became known by 1881 as La Fontaine, because his sister Elizabeth [2]was living there with her husband Samuel Edward Le Marquand ...
- Le Marquand: ... The datestone below shows that the property had passed to Eliza and Samuel by 1884. They were living there at the time of the 1881 census, so the stone does not commemorate their 1871 marriage in St Saviour, nor their occupation of the property, but perhaps some structural alterations made in 1884. In 1881 Samuel was farming the property in succession to his father-in-law James Horman. He and Eliza had four daughters, Ella, Florence, Emmeline and Mabel, and also living with them at La Fontaine was Samuel's 85-year-old aunt Mary Priaulx. By 1891 only the two youngest daughters were still living with their parents. Samuel had retired and there were three servants to look after the household ...
- Vibert: ... On Samuel's death La Fontaine was inherited by his eldest daughter, Ella, who had married Charles Sydney Le Gros in 1906. Charles was a lawyer, so had not continued farming at La Fontaine. Their daughter Muriel married another lawyer, Ralph Vibert in 1939, and had left home when the 1941 registrations showed only her parents at La Fontaine. Muriel inherited the house and lived there with Ralph until her death in 1996. They had a son and four daughters, and after Ralph died in 2008, the property was sold. [3]
Datestones
SE LMQ ♥♥ EM HM 1884 - For Samuel Edward Le Marquand (1839-1899) and Eliza Mary Horman (1846-1921), who married in St Saviour in 1871 The initials and date are on separate lintels on a potato barn behind the house
Historic Environment Record entry
Listed building
A good example of a well-proportioned mid-19th century house in the Georgian style forming an integral whole with associated farm buildings, and potentially earlier structures on the site.
Historic farm group with main house built 1854. Recorded ownership of the farm since 1651.
Principal house is five-bay, two-storey, with single storey wings to the east and west, and ornate Victorian glasshouse with coloured glass and Gothic glazing.
Farmstead surrounding a rectangular yard to the rear includes later 19th century three-bay farmhouse, L-shaped granite stables and cowsheds surmounted with a belfry, pigsties and single storey outbuilding with pigeon holes in the gable.
Old Jersey Houses
Despite the fact that there are records of ownership of the property since 1651, it does not feature in either volume
Notes and references
- ↑ As was common in 19th century Jersey, even in rural St Brelade, the two younger Jacques are found recorded as James in official records as the century progressed
- ↑ By then known as Eliza, after her mother
- ↑ Ralph Vibert was not only an Advocate but a long-serving Senator in the States of Jersey from 1957 to 1987. He was arguably Jersey's most successful and influential politician in the second half of the 20th Century. He negotiated the island's special relationship with the European Union. The 'La Fontaine Archive', papers relating to his family and that of his wife, Muriel, are held by Jersey Archive
