The historic quarter of La Crête
The village is divided into three historic quarters: the COUJON overlooks the mayens area, the DÉLAGETTES stretch out below the church and the CRÊTE is at the start of the old Val d'Anniviers path and those to the Tracuit and Orzival mountain pastures.
Look at how it is organised: in the centre, the fountain, the only source of running water for households and herds. Along the street are the dwellings, with no uniform orientation: they face the village, the narrow sloping street, or the south, with no apparent rules. A little to the east, a small group of barns and stables. They are the focal point of pastoral life in the area.
Take a look at the last house, at the exit towards Tracuit: its magnificent vaulted entrance, carved from Crouja stone (a type of local tufa) and opening onto an enclosed curtain wall, gives it a Mediterranean air. Its position as a sentinel has made it legendary: the hospitality that the master of the house is said to have shown to exhausted travellers earned him the visit of Farinet, the famous counterfeiter!
Look at number 10: the date on the gable (1888) is a reminder of the fire that destroyed the old building. Its reconstruction added a heavy stone staircase. Note the elegance of the lettering.
Look opposite: above a solid balcony sits a half-trophy of a deer, abandoned by the animal in the nearby forests of Vercorin. On the gable, the figures of the drill and the square, attributes of the carpenter, stand alongside the moon and the sun. The unmistakable "channe valaisanne" challenges the builder's generosity. Channes, the indispensable motif on the gables of houses, each have their own particularity: their degree of inclination. Tradition has it that if the wine flows from a vertical cane, the master builder has abundantly "watered" the workers. The steeper the slope, the less generous he was. The opposite explanation is also often given. One house in Vercorin has the goblet on the side of the handle: don't look for the mistake, look for the house!
Take a look at the Georges Amoudruz house (number 8): the Genevan engineer and ethnologist lived here from around 1930 to 1960. He left almost 4,000 handwritten pages of research on Vercorin, and collected 8,000 objects typical of the Rhone region. These pages were published in "Georges Amoudruz à Vercorin, l'Arche perdue, Ed. Monographic, Sierre, 1998".
In addition to the very Christian inscriptions that were the pride of Amoudruz, there is a holy water font in the south-east corner of the building. Once a year, the parish priest had to bless each house, even in the absence of its owner!
In which category would you classify the building that follows the Amoudruz house to the north? In the attics, because there's no floor space inside, whereas there is in the "raccards". The timbers on the north-east side still show the old crossing notches. Here, they fall into the void: they are obviously reused demolition beams.
Farinet's passage through Vercorin by Jean Duey
"He was on the alert day and night! To continue his work, he hid in the homes of reliable people and in secluded places. If we mention Farinet, it is to say that this outlaw with a big heart often passed through Vercorin at night on his way to Val d'Anniviers, where he had acquaintances in Mayoux and Vissoie. A year before his tragic end, around September, Farinet made a late visit to Vercorin. As it was raining and the village of Vercorin was bathed in fog, this adventurer decided to spend the night in Vercorin. He knocked on the door of the last chalet (in the direction of Pinsec) to ask for hospitality. This chalet was inhabited by my (maternal) grandparents Gaudard. They gave him two blankets and a toast. Seraphine and my mother prepared a place for him to rest and sleep in the barn. The next morning, at dawn, he had already left. Before leaving, he showed his gratitude by sowing a few silver coins outside the front door of the cottage. This was a lucky find for the two sisters."
