hamptonne houses

The Langlois House
This is an upper hall house and takes its name from one of the earliest recorded families that we know to have lived on the property - the Langlois. This style of archictecture was common in medieval Brittany; the animals and stores were kept downstairs and people lived in the rooms upstairs which were reached by an outside staircase. This building has been restored to show what life was like in the late eighteenth century.

The doorway was one of the oldest architectural features in the island. While the usual number of stones in a Jersey arch is nine, this example has eleven. The double arched entrance to the farmyard just next to the Langlois House has a date stone set in it giving the date as 1637. The large arch was for vehicles while the smaller arch was for pedestrians.

The Hamptonne House
This takes its name from the Hamptonne family who bought the property in 1633. It was Laurens Hamptonne who proclaimed Charles II king in the Market Place in St.Helier in February 1649.

Over the centuries this house has been transformed a number of times as tastes changed. Originally it was a large, single room open to the rafters; the first floor was added in the sixteenth century in order to allow the farmer and his family more privacy from the servants. Access was provided by building a stair tower on to the back of the house. At the end of the seventeenth century a two storey extension (the Dower Wing) was added to the eastern gable in order to make the house larger. Most of this house has been restored to show the visitor what life was like in the 1640s, while the Dower recreates the 1730s.