1.951 meters
Soussun Soutsùn
Les Fusines Li Fejeune – 1.700 m
Blanchard Biantchart – 1.724 m
Rovinal Rovénal – 1.709 m
Praz-Sec Pra-Sec – 1.700 m
Les Péyoz Li Péyo – 1.725 m
Les Droles Li Drole – 1.757 m
Bernosin Bernozìn – 1.750 m
Reachable on foot from the Crest cable car, or from the opposite side via a ski slope connecting the village to the Monterosa Ski area, Soussun is one of those small settlements located at altitudes between 1,800 and 2,000 meters, around the alpine belt where tall vegetation gives way to pastures and where fieldwork, wrested from the mountain through the labor of generations who created steep terraces to cultivate rye and barley, is today replaced by livestock farming.
It is a territory historically marked by the passage of the Walser people who, during the Middle Ages, migrated from Valais toward the upper Val d’Ayas and the Gressoney Valley, bringing with them their cultural and religious heritage.
Nestled in a small basin free from vegetation but surrounded by a dense forest of larches and firs, Soussun (Soutsùn in patois) was an ancient village of rascards permanently inhabited all year round and therefore completely self-sufficient. The community relied on an oven and a mill, dated on the lintel as far back as 1611, which used the water of the nearby stream, now restored and functioning again (2023).
Of particular interest for its structure is a large 16th-century stadel or rascard (Stadel Soussun), with a vaulted stone room supported by a central column, the subject of restoration and enhancement work.
The Chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, was erected by the Vuillermet family, nicknamed Lenfant, and blessed in 1839. In the first half of the 19th century, Soussun experienced a certain demographic revival, as evidenced by the dates on the buildings restored and adapted to new needs.
Map of Soussun
The mill
The Soussun Mill, now restored (2023), is one of the small community water-powered mills found in many of the villages of Ayas and was in operation for more than three centuries, until the 1950s. A protected cultural asset and a witness to the life of Alpine communities, it has been granted on a one-hundred-year loan for use by the owners to the Municipality of Ayas in order to be opened and used for demonstration purposes.
The history. The original land register of the Italian State, active since 1914, indicates that the building then belonged to different owners from the village, in particular the Vuillermet and Grosjacques families. In fact, the nineteenth-century dates engraved on various buildings in the village on the occasion of renovation works are for the most part accompanied by the initial V of the Vuillermet family: 1827 I.I.V., 1831 I.I.V.ff. (fait faire, had made), 1838 I.I.V. (on the chapel); 1859 P.V. Going further back in time, the 1770 land register of the Kingdom of Sardinia records the mill as belonging to the Particuliers du village de Soussun. During this period too, the numerous owners of houses in the village came from the Vuillermet family. At the end of the seventeenth century, in the Cottet des censes des particuliers et communiers de la parroisse d’Ayas, juridiction de Graines, drawn up by the notary Jean Martin Obert in 1697, the owners of buildings in Soussun are Martin and Charles, sons of maître Joseph Burgay (carpenter), and Jacques, son of Joseph Vuillermet.
The importance of the mill in the historical context of Ayas is due to the date 1611, engraved on the lintel of the entrance door, therefore predating the plague that struck the Valley in 1630. The construction date 1611 is written incorrectly with the sequence of numbers 1 6 0 1 1. In the central part of the inscription is the Christogram IHS. Following this is the letter W, recalling the name Wuillerme or Wilhelm, William, from which the surname Vuillermet would derive, while the letter A joined to the W could recall the name of the person who commissioned the mill. At the end is another Christian symbol, the recrossed cross.
The dendrochronological analyses carried out on four larch wood elements (the ridge beam, the door lintel bearing the engraving, and two struts) established that the tree was felled in the autumn-winter of 1610/1611. The year 1611 is therefore without doubt the construction date of the structure, but it cannot be ruled out that the building was rebuilt on a pre-existing mill. A fifth sample, taken from a plank of the mill’s internal platform, dates to the spring of 1859 and documents the time of the most recent reconstruction of the hydraulic mechanism.
The restoration. The restoration work, carried out in 2023, involved the reconstruction of the roof, the rebuilding of the wooden structure that forms the mechanism enabling the mill to operate, and the supply of a pair of serizzo millstones from quarries in the Val d’Ossola (Piedmont). Like most of the small mills in the mountain villages of the Aosta Valley, which mostly ground rye, it contains only one pair of millstones. The upper millstone is driven by a vertical shaft powered by a horizontal paddle wheel, the ritrecine, without gears.
Stadel Soussun
The building, dating back to the 16th century, has been preserved over time thanks to ongoing maintenance work and stands today in its original form, serving as an example of rural architecture. On the ground floor, the masonry section features the extraordinary vaulted ceiling made of dressed stone in its entirety, a very rare example throughout the Val d’Ayas.
The Swiss stone pine
A century-old witness to history is the great Swiss stone pine, also known as the Swiss pine, a symbol that stands tall in the centre of the village. A very long-lived conifer with fine, soft wood that is easy to carve, it is well suited to fine woodwork for the creation of furniture and sculptures, but above all for the famous Ayas clogs.
A visit
The English reverend Samuel William King (1821–1868), who walked almost the entire length of the Aosta Valley with his wife Emma in the summer of 1855, stopped to spend the night in Soussun during one of his journeys, as a guest of the Vuillermet Lenfant family. For dinner, they were served a huge omelette with rye bread as hard as a rock, as it was already nine months old, and cheese, whilst all the villagers, in amazement, had sat down around them to watch.
