WOODEN HOUSE STANDING

Owned by the Dormoy family since 1870, the estate originally grew sugar cane and owned a sugar mill. After a period of crisis at the beginning of the ^20th century, the factory was transformed into a distillery, partially compensating for the decline in activity by producing rum and growing bananas and coffee. The distillery was destroyed in 1964, during the passage of cyclone Cléo. The dwelling then gradually turned to banana cultivation. Remnants of these successive activities can still be seen, including the remains of a bakery, a weighing machine, an ox yard and numerous sugar boilers scattered around the site.

In the second half of the ^18th century, the main house consisted of a long, shallow, two-storey masonry building. It features a large stone porch. At the front, a timber-framed, boarded building with galleries and balconies was built in the ^19th century. It was at this time, in the 1890s, that Alexis Léger (the poet known as Saint-John Perse and first cousin of the Dormoys) spent his vacations here until the age of 10. Nostalgia for this period can be found in his work, notably in the story of the mad bull, the Indian festival and the water hut in the poem Le Bois debout. The house can still be seen today, atypical in its plans, successive reconstructions and additions, and in its massing, evoking the opulence of a late ^19th-century colonial estate.