Plaisance, St Mary
Historic Jersey buildings
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Property name
Plaisance
Location
Rue de la Vallée, next to St Mary’s churchyard
Type of property
19th century house with dower house
Valuations
There are five 21st century sales on record. The prices given suggest that the most recent were for parts of the property after division.
- 1 September 2009 - £2 million
- 1 October 2009 - £850,000
- 1 May 2010 - Plaisance the the cottage known as La Douaithe £386,000
- 7 February 2014 - £1,030,000
- 7 December 2018 - £250,000 for a fifth undivided share
Families associated with the property
- Dupré: The current fine granite house must have replaced a much earlier one, as there are two 17th century datestones recording ownership by the Dupré family. One is marked 1645 with the initials of Jean Dupré (1600-57) and his wife Foy Arthur, set into the wall of an extension at the back of the present building. The other stone of 1675, in an outbuilding, has the initials of Jean Dupré junior (1630-1718) who married Sara Renaut.
Datestones
- 1645 IDP F - For Jean Dupré and Foy Arthur
- IDP SR 1675 - For Jean Dupré, the son of the previous couple, who married Sara Renaut
Historic Environment Record entry
Listed building
The site includes a fine quality early 19th century house with dower house and a collection of mid-late 19th century farm outbuildings, the dressed grey stone of the dower believed to be reused from a demolished wing of St Mary's Church.
19th century combination farm buildings with glazed upper windows are unique to Jersey and the Channel Islands. Dower house and mid-late 19th century farm outbuildings, with associated gardens and yards.
The property is built on the site of an earlier house, as shown by documentary and cartographic evidence and the presence of two reset 17th century datestones.
The principal house is of more generous proportions than the typical house of its period, being two-storeys with a widely spaced five bays and double-pile plan.
The main south front is rendered in scored ashlar with granite dressings and quoins. The central doorway is arched in granite ashlar, with a fanlight and original twin-panel door. There are later 12-pane timber sashes and glazed timber porch.
The rear elevation is finished in pierre perdu with a later single-bay extension.
Fronting the house is a walled garden named Le Jardin à Potage.
The interior of the house retains its original plan and many original features, including a spacious entrance hall with stone-flagged floor, dado panelling, a mahogany staircase with swept handrail, six-panel doorcases, panel window linings and fireplaces patterned with Regency decorative devices.
Built on to the east gable of the main house is an unusually large dower house with its own front garden.
Forming a courtyard to the north and east of the main house is an interesting set of associated mid-late 19th century farm outbuildings. The layout of these buildings is partly influenced by the early curved boundary of the adjacent parish churchyard. The outbuildings includes a range of granite pigsties, and a circa 1870s L-plan two-storey combination shed of a form distinctive to Jersey - of rubble granite with chequered brick dressings and a flattened brick arched throughway.
To the north of the site, bordering the churchyard, is a detached two-storey granite cottage incorporating substantial quoins and reused dressed stonework from an earlier property. There is a single storey outbuilding attached to the south.
Old Jersey Houses
Joan Stevens writes in Vol One that the house 'must have been' acquired by Charles Dupré (1536-1600) in about 1658. [1]
St Mary Treasury
Described in the 1983 parish treasury as 'a fine house and outbuildings with a pretty dower house facing the road to the east'. The 17th century datestones record an earlier house on the site.
Notes and references
- ↑ This statement, which is clearly nonsense, went uncorrected in later editions. The dates given for Charles are correct, but the house was already owned by his grandson Jean in 1645. If the suggested date of acquisition was meant to be 1558, Charles would have been only 22
