Les Buissonnets

Family Maison of the Martin family

In November 1877, shortly after Madame Martin's death in Alençon, the family settled in Lisieux and became a tenant of the Maison des Buissonnets located a little outside the city, on the road to Pont-l'Evêque, in the alley “Chemin du Paradis”. Thérèse spent eleven years of her life there until she entered Carmel.

Rented by Louis martin, the house of Buissonnets was acquired in 1909 by the cousin of Thérèse who lodged successive tenants there, often devoted to the cause of the young Carmelite. From 1911, the house became a place of pilgrimage. In 1931 the Buissonnets were entrusted to the Oblates of Sainte-Thérèse. The sisters welcome visitors, pilgrims and tourists every day. Donations from visitors help maintain the garden and the house.

The first impression that seizes the pilgrim, when he enters Les Buissonnets, is an impression of calm. In this peaceful setting, he spontaneously imagines Thérèse happy to live, surrounded by the affection of her father and of his four sisters.

Thérèse explains herself, recounting her childhood memories: “It was with pleasure that I came to Lisieux… to Les Buissonnets, that's where my life was truly happy”.
But let us not forget all the same that she qualified this part of her life which goes from four and a half to fourteen years, as "the most painful period of my existence".

It is, in fact, at Les Buissonnets that she experienced the entrance to the the Carmel of her two older sisters who had played the role of second mother to her after the death of Madame Martin.

The fact remains that this house surrounded by trees was little Thérèse's "sweet childhood nest" and that visiting the different rooms allows us to imagine some episodes from her childhood and adolescence: