Upstream to Hamptonne

Start : The walk begins in the small car park at the start of Le Sentier des Moulins footpath.

(S) The building near our starting point is on the site of Le Moulin a Sucre (A). Walk on, and after a straight stretch that runs beside the stream, we bear left and enter a copse that grows around the remains of Vicart Mill (B) .

(1) Leave the shade and continue past the Millennium Stone and the interpretation board. Cross the road and use the raised walkway to navigate the water meadow, often home to our local Jersey cows. The path climbs, and below us is Dannemarche Reservoir. (C) Under Dannemarche Reservoir is the site of the mill that became known as Le Moulin des Ecoliers. (D)

(2) We follow the stream for some distance, then cross over onto a wide grassy area. Although there are few clues today, this was the site of de la Haye’s Mill (E).

The path through the meadow runs alongside a very beautifully constructed granite wall. (F) When the wall ends, bear left and continue up the road to Hamptonne, the group of farm buildings in the distance on the right.(E)

The walk begins in the small car park at the start of Le Sentier des Moulins footpath.
We follow a stream that, until the age of steam, powered seven water mills in the valley. At the start of the 19th century, milling was a booming trade in Jersey. Corn was imported from as far away as the B ground in local mills and then exported to the colonies free of Corn Tax.
The route is almost all on woodland paths.

For information on visiting the heritage attraction mentioned in this guide, including admission prices and opening times, please visit the Jersey Heritage website.

Hamptonne Country Life Museum
Hamptonne Country Life Museum gives the visitor a unique insight into six centuries of rural Jersey life.

Explore the orchard and learn about bygone crafts and quirky traditions from the resident Goodwyf. During the summer visitors can meet the Hamptonne pigs and their piglets in the traditional pigsty with outdoor yard and mud bath, and in August see traditional ironworking skills when blacksmith Nick Ostroumoff takes up residence

(A) Le Moulin a Sucre, a mill that crushed loaf sugar, brought in from the South Americas by local ships. When the mills disappeared, the valley became the site of the first reservoirs built on the island.

(B) Sometimes known as Le Moulin a l’Eaux et Chevaux, because horses were often used to power the machinery during periods of droughts, Vicart Mill began to prosper in the 19th century in the hands of E.C.Gilley. A close inspection of the area will reveal that the cellar walls are still visible.

(C) Opened in 1909, this was the second major catchment created on the island by the Jersey New Waterworks Company and, like Millbrook Reservoir lower down the valley, it supports course fishing. Among the species found in these reservoirs are bream, tench, carp and perch.

(D) This mill belonged to Laurens Baudains who allowed the profits to go towards sending local boys to Oxford to study theology. Our route takes us to the valley road for a few yards before returning to the woodland.

(E). Like most of the valley mills, it initially ground grain, but became a paper mill in the middle of the 19th century when more local newspapers appeared on the island.

(F) This wall, and the road-widening that went with it, took place during the German Occupation. The start of the Occupation saw a huge rise in the number of unemployed men; with the island cut off from the rest of the world, tourists no longer arrived and import and export business stopped. Over 2,000 people were out of work, and it fell to the Department of Labour under Deputy Edward Le Quesne, to find work for them so that they were not obliged to work for the occupying forces. This work and a number of other projects were specifically created to give these men something to do.