Grenier Plantation|Old Frenchman Place in The Hamlet (Location)

This "tremendous pre-Civil War plantation" has been abandoned "for thirty years now" at the time of the story (3, 4). During that time the small farmers who live nearby have been tearing it apart for firewood, so that now "the tremendous house" designed by an "imported and nameless architect" has been reduced to a "broken roof and topless chimneys and one high rectangle of window through which [one can] see the stars" (375). Its outbuildings and landscaping are also all in ruins. The property is owned by Will Varner when the novel begins - and by Suratt, Bookwright and Armstid when it ends. Like the anonymous "old Frenchman" who built it when it was perhaps the first and certainly one of the largest slave plantations in Yoknapatawpha, they bought it hoping to get rich.