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All French heritage classified by regions, departments and cities

  2. Divers
  3. 97218 Grand'Rivière

  4. Habitation Beauséjour

Habitation Beauséjour

Habitation Beauséjour


    97218 Grand'Rivière
Photo de Habitation Beauséjour

Timeline

Temps modernes
Révolution/Empire
XIXe siècle
Époque contemporaine
1700
1800
1900
2000
1671
First traces of sugar
1793
Date engraved on the kitchen
1800–1810
Construction of canal
1900–1912
Fusion of housing
1916
Death of Senator Knight
1945
Dropping sugar cane
1996
Historical Monument
Aujourd'hui
Aujourd'hui

Heritage classified

The base and wooden buildings, the main dwelling, the kitchen and the bathroom, the Case Negres street (façades and roofs), the masonry buildings, the planted and irrigated terraces, the garden and the various basins (Box B 50 b, c, d, e); the hydraulic network comprising the canal along its entire length with its banks, tunnels, aqueducts, bridges, basins, from its intake on the large river to the fountain of Case Nègres Street (Box B 50, 54 73; C 10, 15, 17): classification by order of 9 August 1996

Key figures

Chambert Antoine dit La Rivière - First deemed owner Originally from Agde, act in the 4th quarter 17th.
Potier de Courcy - Owner before 1898 Sell half to François Chazaud.
Amédée Knight - Senator and Owner (1898–1916) Creator of rum *H.B.S.*, died on site.
Pierre François Honoré Louis de Lucy de Fossarieu - Owner since 1928 Acquiert 335 hectares after Knight.

Origin and history

The Beauséjour residence, located between the Potiche River and the Grande Rivière in Martinique, extends over 220 hectares of agricultural land and buildings typical of colonial dwellings. Located on a promontory at 102 meters above sea level, it dominates Bagasse Coves and organizes around a wooden master house (2nd quarter of the 19th century), utility pavilions, a stone kitchen dated 1793, and a working town called a case-nigger street. The site also includes irrigated terraces, basins, and a 4 076-metre canal built between 1800 and 1810 by slaves for water supply, now overgrown by vegetation.

Beauséjour's history dates back to the late seventeenth century, with traces of sweets on the burrows of 1671. The estate is the result of the merger, between 1900 and 1912, of the houses of the Verne and Grand'Rivière, after successive changes of owners (Chambert Antoine, Mirebeaux Des Ruissaux, Potier de Courcy, etc.). In the 19th century, housing produced sugar and rum, before converting to bananas after 1945. The canal, damaged by the 1979 cyclone, and the distillery, transformed into a banana hangar, testify to the economic changes at the site.

Classified as a Historic Monument in 1996, the house retains remarkable elements such as the facades of the dark boxes, the terraces planted, and the hydraulic network (tunnels, aqueducts, bridges). Private property since 1928 (family of Lucy de Fossarieu), it illustrates the evolution of Martiniquia crops, moving from cocoa and sugar cane to bananas, while bearing the marks of slave history and natural disasters (rashes of 1902, cyclones).

External links

Page Monumentum

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