Puits des Anglais

A rescue excavation was carried out in 2020 prior to the construction of a pedestrian footpath, picnic kiosks, leisure and sport facilities and a car park on the Puits des Anglais site.

The area surveyed was close to the ruins of the Baril sugar processing plant built in 1861. The sugarcane plantations were developed at a late stage in this region previously dominated by coffee and clove farming. After the slump in sugar prices, sugar production at the plant ended. At this point, it was employing 430 indentured labourers and freed slaves. The plant was transformed into a manioc starch factory, and a new chimney was built in 1919.

The excavated area was once the camp used by plant workers, close to the seashore, on a rough stretch of coastline, with access to fresh water from the Puits des Anglais well. The structures identified, notably postholes, were part of building foundations. These houses were built using perishable materials – wood and leaves – and the ground plans are not easy to make out. Archaeologists also identified hearths and a forge area.

A very large building was excavated close to the gully. Composed of three alignments of postholes, it probably covered a minimum area of 300 sq.m. and was at least 50 metres long. The floor has not survived and it is impossible to reconstruct its internal layout, but dump pits in the immediate vicinity suggest it was used as a habitat rather than a shed or other industrial facility.

Another dump pit, cutting across a plot boundary, contained quality portable finds dated to the end of the 19^th century. They may have come from the mansion house and been dumped at the edge of the plot or from the workers’ camp where some objects may have been recycled.

The first excavation of a workers’ camp in Réunion, it forms part of a broader research programme exploring the living quarters of labourers. Until now, most of what we knew about the living conditions of indentured labourers came from archive documents.