Les Houmets are to the east of Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Their name derives from a diminutive of hou, a Norman/Guernésiais word meaning islets. They are tidal islands. Among the islets are Houmet Benest/Houmet Benêt, Houmet Paradis and Houmet Hommetol. Although Victor Hugo suggests that they were heavily eroded by quarrying, Victor Coysh disagrees saying:
Victor Hugo
who wrote about many of the Channel Islands in his books, described Les Houmets, in his work The Toilers of the Sea. Gilliat, the main character lives on Houmet Paradis: Moreover, this house had some very nasty inhabitants besides Gilliat, The novel was written in the 1860s and set in the 1820s when the islands were still inhabited.
The islets
Houmet Benest/Benêt is about from the shore, preceded by a small rock called "Hommet" from the same root. It is triangular, and 80 × 50 yards. There is an 18th-centurygun battery here, to defend against the French. The German occupation added their own, and the British another after the Germans left. The steamer Clarrie sank off Houmet Benêt in 1921, in the Great Roussel. Heathery Brae in 1952 tried to salvage it, but ended up being wrecked itself, and there are also the wrecks of Vixen, Rescue and Romp went ashore here. It is covered in grass and brambles. Houmet Paradis, the fictional Gilliat's home, was originally known as Houmet de l'Eperquerie, as it was used for fish gutting, and drying on stands known as perques. It was formerly owned by the Collas family, whose estate at Paradis, gave the islet its new name. In the 1920s, it was used for quarrying, and it was also used for grazing cattle, and has a lot of grass. In 1951 it was sold to James Watson of Newcastle upon Tyne for the sum of £500 who placed the island under the stewardship of the National Trust of Guernsey. It remained within the family until 2004 when it was sold at auction by James Watson's grandson to a local consortium with the intention of maintaining the island as a nature reserve. Hommetol, more commonly called Omptolle by the Ordnance Survey etc., is used for gathering ormer. It is mostly covered in thrift.
