WOODEN HOUSE STANDING

Owned by the Dormoy family since 1870, the house originally exploited sugar cane and owned a sugar factory. After a period of crisis at the beginning of the 20th century, the factory was transformed into a distillery and partially compensated for the drop in activity by producing rum, growing bananas and coffee. The distillery is destroyed in 1964, during the passage of the cyclone Cleo. The house then turns little by little to banana growing. From these successive activities are preserved the remains of a noise, a scale, an ox park and multiple sugar boilers scattered on the site.

In the second half of the 18th century, the main house is composed of a masonry building, two-storey, long and shallow. It is embellished with a large stone porch. At the front, stands a half-timbered building clad with planks, opening on to galleries and balconies, 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 Dormoy family), came to spend his holidays until the age of 10. One finds in his work, nostalgia for this period, particularly in the story of the mad bull, the Indian festival and the water hut in the poem Le Bois debout. The house is still visible today, atypical in its plans, its successive reconstructions and additions and its volumetry, evoking the opulence of a late 19th century colonial property.