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Read Ebook: The Channel Islands by Morris Joseph E Joseph Ernest
Font size: Background color: Text color: Add to tbrJar First Page Next PageEbook has 181 lines and 16499 words, and 4 pagesINDEX 63 FACING PAGE THE CHANNEL ISLANDS JERSEY Elle est pour nous la France, et, dans son lit des fleurs, Elle en a le sourire et quelquefois les pleurs. Mont Orgueil, where we stand, is not a bad starting-point from which to commence our exploration of Jersey. Happy, indeed, the visitor who arrives at this little port from France--and the steamer comes from Carteret in little more than an hour. Most English tourists, on the other hand, make Jersey first at St. Helier, which happens to be a town of considerable dulness, and compares very badly with St. Peter Port, in Guernsey. Mont Orgueil, however, may be reached at once from St. Helier by one of the two strange little railways that traverse the south coast of the island. The traveller should quit the train at the previous station of Gorey Village, and walk thence across Gorey Common to the Castle. This last, placed bravely on its boss of rugged rock, grows more and more impressive the nearer we approach it. Superb in situation, and unusually picturesque, this "hill of pride" has yet few features of real architectural interest. Parts of it date from about the end of the twelfth century, and the archaeologist, of course, will gather "sermons" from every stone of it. But the ordinary sight-seer will be best delighted with the picturesque approach up long flights of steps past successive gateways; with the beautiful views of land and sea to be got from its towers; and, best of all, by the general view of the castle itself, dominating the little harbour that crouches below its walls. The structure is built of a soft-red granite, that is very pleasant to look on, and not least so in spring, when its broken walls are beautifully variegated with a thousand brilliantly orange wallflowers. One is reminded for a moment of the famous verse-- A rose-red city, half as old as time-- The poet then goes on to tell us how this stronghold is sometimes assaulted--but assaulted to no purpose--by sea and wind, "two boystrous foes": Less than a decade later and the walls of Mont Orgueil witnessed still blacker tragedy. The quarrel of the Bandinels and the Carterets is an ugly page of history that almost recalls in its unrelenting ferocity some of the worst clan "vendettas" of the Highlands. The trouble began, apparently, with the action of Sir Philip de Carteret, when Governor of Jersey, in attempting to deprive David Bandinel--the writer does not know the rights and wrongs of the quarrel--of part of his tithes as Dean of the island. Shortly after this the Civil War began in England, and the Channel Islands were immediately plunged into internecine strife. Philip de Carteret was leader of the Royalists, while Bandinel espoused the cause of the Parliament. The latter at first was triumphant, and Carteret and his wife, Elizabeth, were respectively besieged by the Parliamentary troops, the one in Elizabeth Castle, and the other in Mont Orgueil. Carteret was not quite sixty years old, but the severities of the siege were too great for him. There were wrongs, no doubt, on both sides; but the Puritans seem certainly to have acted on occasion with a surly lack of generosity that goes far to atone for the brutal persecution by the Royalist party of a man like Prynne. In 1644, when Colonel Morris was besieged in Pontefract, we read in the diary of Nathan Drake that "the enemy basely stayed all wine from coming to the Castle for serving of the Communion upon Easter Day, although Forbus had graunted p'tection for the same, and one Browne of Wakefield said if it was for our damnation we should have it, but not for our Solvation." Similarly, in Jersey, the Parliamentary Committee, of whom Dean Bandinel was one, refused the dying Sir Philip the last consolations of religion, and even the presence of his wife. This, too, after an appeal so piteous as might well have drawn iron tears down Pluto's cheek, And made Hell grant what Love did seek. Presently the "jade Fortune" changed her favours, and the island was recovered for the King by Sir George Carteret, nephew and son-in-law to its former Governor. Dean Bandinel and his son James, the Rector of St. Mary's, were immediately clapped into prison in Mont Orgueil Castle, in the same cell that had formerly been occupied by Prynne. It does not appear that they were treated harshly, but Sir George was a man of cruel severity, and it may well be that they dreaded his further resentment. Anyhow, father and son resolved on a romantic escape. At about three o'clock in the morning, on the stormy night of February 10, 1644, they attempted to lower themselves from the window of their cell by a rope made of knotted napkins, sheets, and pieces of cord. "It is improbable that they had reconnoitred this place in the daytime," says Durell, "for had they been aware of the great elevation, they would never have made the attempt, as long as they were in their senses." Durell wrote in 1837, when the Tour de Mont was in existence for the whole of its height. This is said to have been 200 feet high, and the place of imprisonment of the Bandinels was immediately under its battlements. The building was supposed to be dangerous, and is now pulled down to its basement. Anyhow, when James Bandinel came to the bottom of the rope--he was the first to venture on the perilous descent--he found it was much too short. He allowed himself to drop on the rocks below, and was seriously hurt by the fall. His father, still less fortunate, was only halfway down, when the flimsy rope parted in two. He was thus dashed to the earth from a much greater height than his son, and was found lying there next morning in a dying condition. The son, after wrapping his insensible old father in his cloak, had attempted to make good his own escape. He was caught, however, a few days later, and conducted back in triumph to his cell. That same day the gates of Mont Orgueil had been opened to allow his father's body to be taken to the grave. David Bandinel was buried in St. Martin's Churchyard, two miles to the north-west of Mont Orgueil by the Faldouet road. I have searched for his grave on the east side of the churchyard, but there seems now to be no memorial, and the hawthorn that once marked it has vanished. It is said, however, to be in close proximity to the tombstones of Lucy and Mary Roche Jackson. His wife and son were afterwards laid by his side. Most of the interest of Jersey, however, except its fields of giant cabbage-stalks, and its green lanes of quaint little pollarded trees, will probably be found on the sea-coast, or near it. Let us, from Mont Orgueil, set our faces to the west, calling, on our way towards modern St. Helier, at the two ancient parish churches of Grouville and St. Clement's. In Grouville churchyard are buried seven soldiers who fell in a skirmish with a detachment of the French who had been left behind by Rullecourt, when he landed on this spot and advanced on St. Helier on January 6, 1781. Grouville church itself has little interest. Like other churches in the island, it is built of granite, and has windows with good Flamboyant tracery, except where this last has been cut away for the insertion of ugly "church-warden" sashes. It possesses, however, in the south wall of the south chapel, a very curious feature, the object of which is obscure. This is a niche on the level of the floor, with a late segmental head, and with what seems a broken cavity in the lower part at the back. I do not know whether this was once used as an oven for baking the sacramental wafer, such as those that are sometimes thought to have been found in the Surrey churches of Limpsfield, Nutfield, and Dunsfold. St. Clement's, a mile to the south, and lying off the direct road to St. Helier, should be visited for the sake of its ancient wall-paintings. One of these exhibits St. Michael; another St. Margaret of Antioch, emerging from the body of the dragon, who had vainly tried to swallow her; and another St. Barbara of Heliopolis, standing near her tower. Still more interesting are the scanty relics of the "Trois Vifs" and the "Trois Morts"--the legend of the three Kings, who, when hunting in the forest, were suddenly confronted by three open graves, or by three hideous skeletons. The classical instance of this morality is in the Campo Santo at Pisa; and there is another fine example, in a kind of vestry, on the south side of the great abbey-church of St. Riquier, near Abbeville. It was altogether rather a favourite subject with medieval, religious artists, not less than twenty-three examples being recorded in England by Mr. Keyser, as well as one at Ste. Marie du Chastel, in Guernsey. It must not be confounded with the parallel "Dance of Death," of which there are only five recorded instances, in addition to the one at old St. Paul's. There is still a grand example of this last on the back of the north choir stalls, in the strange old abbey-church of La Chaise Dieu, in Central France. Charles' headquarters, when a boy in Jersey, were in Elizabeth Castle, whither he was sent by his father for greater safety in 1646. Later in the same year he left for Fontainebleau, but returned to the Channel Islands in September, 1649. In the meanwhile the elder Charles had perished on the scaffold at Whitehall; and Jersey, unlike Guernsey, still loyalist to the core, was one of the few places--Pontefract Castle, in Yorkshire, was another--where his son was immediately proclaimed as King, on February 17, 1649. Elizabeth Castle itself is another of those picturesque places of semi-insulation that are not uncommon among historical sites--Holy Island, and the two Mounts St. Michael, are other famous examples. At time of low water it is picturesquely approached by a rough and rocky causeway across the sands; but the building itself has been greatly altered, and presents very little archaeological interest. From St. Helier westward, round the half-moon curve of St. Aubin Bay, past West Park, Millbrook, and Beaumont, is now largely a crescent of continuous houses. St. Aubin's itself is a picturesque little watering-place, with far greater natural advantages than its bigger neighbour. Immediately to the south of the town begins at once the fine, red line of granite cliffs, which, turning definitely westward at Noirmont Point, continues, past Portelet and St. Brelade's Bays, to the south-west corner of the island at Corbi?re Point. Portelet Bay is a charming recess, with the rocky little Ile au Guerdain in its centre. On the summit of this last is Janvrin's Tower. It is said that Philippe Janvrin, returning home from Nantes, then desolated with plague, was forced to undergo quarantine in this bay in 1721; and that here the poor wretch died within actual sight of home, but without ever exchanging a word with his wife and children. He was buried at first in the Ile au Guerdain, but afterwards removed to St. Brelade's churchyard. St. Brelade's Bay, nearly two miles across, if we measure from Le Fret to La Moye Point, is perhaps the most gracious on the Jersey coast. The church has a very picturesque outline, with a saddle-backed tower like that of St. Sampson's, in Guernsey. It was admirably restored a few years ago, when the plaster was stripped from the vaulted roof that is common to most old churches in the Channel Islands, and is probably analogous to the vaulted roofs of the fortified churches of Pembrokeshire. Mr. Bicknell, however, is wrong in saying that "the interior walls ... look very dignified in their original condition." Nothing is more certain than that medieval churches--at any rate in cases where the walls are of rubble masonry--were plastered, and commonly covered with wall-paintings. Such plastering and old wall-painting may still be found at St. Brelade's in the Chapelle ?s P?cheurs, or Fishermen's Chapel, that remains in the parish churchyard. These, according to Mr. Keyser, represent parts of two Dooms or Final Judgments, Our Lord before Herod, an Annunciation, the Assumption of the Virgin, and the Offering of the Magi. They probably date from the fifteenth century, and the attendant makes them visible by the simple expedient of throwing the light on them with a mirror. The existence of this old chapel side by side with the parish church--the same thing seems formerly to have happened at Grouville--is a subject of curious inquiry. Chantrey chapels were sometimes built in churchyards--there is still a fourteenth-century example at Carew, in Pembrokeshire, and there was formerly one at Newdigate, in Surrey--but these would be generally of later date; whereas the Fishermen's Chapel is supposed to date from quite the beginning of the twelfth century. In the grounds of the St. Brelade's Hotel is an ancient cross of the kind that is stated by Mr. Bicknell formerly to have "stood at nearly every place where four cross roads met in the island." The walk across the south coast of Jersey, from Mont Orgueil to the Corbi?re, taking the train for the four dull miles, where there is nothing to see, between St. Helier and St. Aubin, will probably almost exhaust, except for the archaeologist of the Dry-as-Dust school, the artificial attractions of the island of Jersey. Of course, there are other antiquities to see: St. Ouen's Manor, for example, now recently restored, and the ancient house of the Carterets; the cromlechs at Gorey and the Coup?ron; and the seven old churches that we have not yet visited. But when we have seen the wall-paintings at St. Brelade's and St. Clement's; have inspected Elizabeth Castle, and the curious font at Prince's Tower; and, above all, have made every stick and stone of Mont Orgueil our own treasured possession, it will be time for most of us to turn our attention, less to the artificial attractions of Jersey, than to its wonderful natural beauties. It is lucky that these lie mostly on the north coast, which is well out of reach of St. Helier. It would be sad indeed if this silent succession of bays, stretching in stern sublimity from Grosnez Point to the long useless breakwater on the south of Fliquet Bay, were infested with tea-gardens, and boarding-houses, and villas. For this twelve miles of coast is both wholly unspoilt, and one of the loveliest imaginable. Brakes, no doubt, in the season, with their hordes of jolly trippers, invade for a few hours the sacred silences of Gr?ve de Lecq and Rozel Bay. These, however, are limited to definite times and places; nor will it be hard for the quiet lover of Nature to evade their unwelcome gaieties. Every inch of this glorious stretch of coast should be walked over, if possible; should often be revisited; and should be lingered over lovingly. Where else have these rose-red cliffs a counterpart, jutting out into the bluest, or most emerald, of seas, and haunted by myriads of clanging sea-fowl, unless it be on the borders of lost Lyonesse? Waters that rest on a granite bed are always of amazing translucency-- Pleased to watch the waters sleep, Round Iona green and deep-- GUERNSEY Jersey, with larger acreage and a bigger population, is content to form a kingdom by itself; Guernsey is fain to ally itself with its immediate neighbour, Sark, and even seek bonds of union with Alderney, twenty miles away. The diversity maintained jealously in these little islands, which an Englishman is too hastily accustomed to regard in a lump, is complex and even amusing. Just a few trivial details must suffice. In Guernsey the toad is altogether unknown, except for some few stuffed specimens in the Guille-All?s Museum; whereas Jersey exhibits an exaggerated species that is supposed to be quite peculiar to itself. The mole, again, though common in Jersey and Alderney, is unknown in Guernsey, though the last has a field-vole of its own. Guernsey, in fact, is supposed to have become an island at least 14,000 years ago, whilst Jersey was torn asunder from France not more than 3,000 years before Christ. Guernsey thus received only the Continental fauna that flourished at the period of its final insulation. All the islands, like Iceland, are exempt from poisonous snakes. In domestic animals, again, the distinction is strongly marked. Jersey has a picturesque cow of its own, mottled white and yellow, placid, and rather big. Guernsey, on the other hand, has a smaller breed of cattle, much more wiry in movement, and a kind of tawny red. Beasts from Guernsey and Alderney are allowed to inter-breed, but the Jersey cattle are looked on as undesirable aliens, and sternly prohibited from the sister State. In all three instances the cattle are tethered when at pasture, as happens also in some parts of France. The animal, thus driven to forage in a circle, perhaps crops the ground more closely than when free to range at will. Guernsey, whatever were its merits half-a-hundred years ago, will now, perhaps, be found the dullest of the Channel Islands. Owing to the frenzy for intensive cultivation, the inland parts of the island are now literally covered with glass. Acre after acre of ugly rows of hothouses have displaced over most of the interior what once were pleasant fields. Attached to each such settlement is an ugly concrete house, and each has a skeleton iron windmill, for pumping up water, that completes the repellent aspect of the scene. The writer has travelled over most of the island on foot to explore its twelve old churches, and investigate its coast. Frankly, he is driven to put on record that he found it a dismal task. Features, of course, remain of interest and beauty, if one is willing to walk about in blinkers, and seldom raise one's eyes above the ground. The old, granite-built farmhouses, standing back, as a rule, but a little from the road, are uncommon, and extremely picturesque. Inland Guernsey, again, possesses one single glory that is almost unknown in Jersey. Everywhere in the island, commencing even with the very suburbs of St. Peter Port itself, the low, green, sod walls that divide the little fields are covered with millions of saffron primroses. Such a wealth of primroses I have never seen elsewhere--not even in the remotest lanes of the Surrey or Sussex Wealds. How the primrose has survived in such excessive fertility, with so huge a population, and with such bitter cultivation, is a problem easily stated, but not very easily solved. Whether it is likely long to survive is a question one fears to ask. In Sark, again, the primrose--though here it is no marvel--carpets the ground like daisies on a "wet bird-haunted English lawn"; like daisies, too, in Switzerland, the stalks of the Sark primrose grow to remarkable length. But as soon as we cross to Jersey--and when the writer noted this strong contrast, he crossed directly from Guernsey to Jersey, and almost directly from Jersey to Sark--the primrose is seen no more by thousands in the hedge-side. The only spot where I have noticed it growing in profusion in the larger island was on the prehistoric "hougue" at Prince's Tower. Guernsey, however, though thus irritatingly spoilt in its interior--for the visitor comes to see beautiful scenery, and not to assist at a horticultural triumph--still possesses in its south coast a feature of distinction that neither recklessness nor greed of money has so far been able to spoil. It also possesses in St. Peter Port a capital so pleasant, and withal so picturesque, that it makes one desiderate all the more keenly the beautiful environment in which it was once set. Approaching this port in the early morning light, the colour and grouping of the little town seem almost fantastically correct. Surely this more resembles an imaginary sketch than a city actually realized in this commonplace, workaday world. St. Peter's Church, in the middle of the picture, has just the required outline, and is set in just the right place. The tall, brown houses behind it, with their mellow red roofs, are of just the right colour, and in just the right number. The new church of St. Barnabas is just rightly designed, and is built just exactly where it ought to be built. And lastly, the wooded amphitheatre behind all, with its sprinkling of white villas, is just neither more nor less than such a background ought to be. A composition like this on the drop-scene of a theatre would scarcely surprise us, but here we rub our eyes. We land; and the cheerful anticipation of the sea-view is hardly hurt at all by contact with actual fact. A pleasanter little town than this, or more full of bustling happiness, is not readily conceived. Darker aspects no doubt are there, but they do not obtrude on the casual view. Castle Cornet, immediately on our left as we approach the harbour, holds much the same position to St. Peter Port as Elizabeth Castle holds to St. Helier. Castle Cornet, indeed, is connected with the mainland by a causeway; but as a building it is equally uninteresting. In fact, the only object of antiquarian interest in St. Peter Port is the old parish church, so conspicuous on the quay. This has a central tower, with a good leaded spire, that is luckily not twisted like the leaded spire at Chesterfield. At the side is a small cote for the sanctus bell, exactly as at Barnstaple, in Devonshire. More frequently these cotes were placed on the east gable of the nave, whilst at Oxenton, in Gloucestershire, the sanctus bell swings to the present day in a curious little opening high up on the south face of the fifteenth-century tower. It is possible, too, or even probable, that the curious "low-side" windows--once absurdly called "leper windows"--which generally occur, when they occur at all, towards the south-west corner of the chancel, were used to enable the sanctus bell to be rung through their opening by hand. On the ringing of this bell the passer-by would bow his head in reverential awe, just as the peasants in Millet's picture bow their heads at the ringing of the Angelus. Inside, the chief feature of St. Peter's Church is the strangeness of the nave arcades, the arches of which spring from piers that are only two or three feet high. Notice also the Flamboyant tracery of the windows, so typical of the Channel Islands, and the very striking piscina in the south aisle of the choir. Sir, in Guernsey, I watch'd a woman burn; and in her agony, The mother came upon her--a child was born-- And, sir, they hurl'd it back into the fire. Vale church itself, not far from the Grand Havre, and in a flat, unlovely neighbourhood, is possibly the most interesting, architecturally, in the island. The chancel arch should be noticed, with its chevron ornament; the chancel, vaulted in two compartments ; the piscina in the aisle; and the wall arcade. Another striking feature is the brackets for images on the columns of the arcade, between the nave and its aisle. A series like this is uncommon; though there is a group of churches in West Yorkshire--sometimes supposed to have been built by the Tempest family--Kirkby Malham is the finest--which has traces of canopied niches in the same position. The finest single niche that the writer knows of this kind is on the south side of the nave in the fine, fifteenth-century church of Lechlade, in Gloucestershire. Towards the west end of the churchyard is another tumble-down dolmen. Thus Christians of the twentieth century are buried in the same soil that received the bones of their neolithic ancestors no one knows how many thousands of years ago. The other point of interest in the neighbourhood of L'Er?e is the rocky islet of Lihou, approached by a causeway across the sands, or more properly the rocks, but only at low tide. Here are the scanty fragments of the Priory and Chapel of Notre Dame de la Roche, apparently a cell to the monastery of Mont St. Michel, which seems to have had so much to do with the spiritual matters of the Channel Islands. The tide at St. Michael's Mount is said to rush up across the level sands more quickly than the fleetest horse can gallop, and visitors to Lihou will be well advised to remember that here again its onset is unexpected and swift. At L'Er?e village is another dolmen, the Creux des F?es, to which passing allusion has already been made. St. Peter's Church in this neighbourhood--in full, St. Pierre du Bois--is perhaps the handsomest, though not necessarily the most interesting, of all the twelve churches in the island, and exhibits some Flamboyant work of a very pleasing character. ALDERNEY, SARK, AND THE LESSER ISLANDS Hitherto, in dealing with the two larger of the Channel Islands, we have found their claims to natural beauty in their coasts. The interior of Jersey is no doubt pleasant, with its lush-green valleys running north and south, with its quiet little villages, and with its never-ending potato-fields. The interior of Guernsey, on the other hand, is frankly hideous, save here and there a cottage, or a picturesque old farm, hidden in the folding of some safely secluded dell. But in both cases alike the real distinction of the island is limited to cliffs that for warmth of colour and strangeness of contortion can surely be paralleled in Cornwall alone. Sark, on the contrary, is almost wholly coast; the interior in comparison is a negligible quantity! And almost as much may be said of Alderney. Both these islands are exceedingly small--Sark being only a trifle more than three miles in length, and about one and three-quarters of a mile in breadth ; and Alderney being about three and a half miles in length, from north-east to south-west, and one and a quarter miles in breadth. Alderney is undoubtedly the less beautiful of the two, and is probably by far the least frequently visited of all the different members of the Norman archipelago. The voyage from St. Peter Port, in a very small boat, and made only two or three times in a week, is dreaded, and not without reason, by those for whom rough seas have no welcome. Alderney, again, is the least foreign of the Channel Islands in local colour, though nearest France in situation; and here the old Norman patois has been entirely replaced by English. It possesses in its capital, St. Anne, a small, old-fashioned country town that is wholly without parallel anywhere else in the islands. The harbour is at Braye, a short mile north from the centre of the town; and the visitor, in strong contrast with what happens at Sark, is landed in the least romantic corner of the island. Of the old church nothing now remains but a picturesque tower, and even this does not seem to be mediaeval. The new church was erected from designs by Sir Gilbert Scott, and is, perhaps, the most striking modern building in the Channel Islands. The interior of Alderney, or Aurigny, to use the French form-- Her crew hath seen Castile's black fleet, beyond Aurigny's isle-- is strongly individualized, and rather wild and remote. One feels at once that this little island has a flavour of its own--a state of things no longer felt among the villadom and glass-houses of Guernsey. The strength of Alderney, however, lies chiefly in its west and south coasts; no one would visit the island except to visit these, or unless one happened to be an enthusiast for the world's neglected and inaccessible spots. I do not know how far the barbarous quarrying that was projected some six or seven years ago on the south side of the island has since been carried out, or how far it has injured the amenities of the coast. Anyhow, the Two Sisters, towards the south-west corner of the island, are hardly to be rivalled in their splintered grandeur, even in Jersey or Sark. The final settlement of Sark--which the French call Serq--dates only from the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when Helier de Carteret established himself on the then deserted island, and planted there forty families, whom he brought from his native Jersey. He also built a church, and instituted a Presbyterian Vicar, Cosm? Brevint--being himself a Presbyterian--who continued to hold office till his death in 1576, being one who spared, or flattered, no one, "great or small, in his reprehensions." It is rightly said that the constitution of Sark is still largely feudal in character. The land is parcelled out into the original forty holdings, and some of these are said still to be held by descendants of the original holders. The lord of the island is still the Seigneur, though the lordship has passed from the hands of the de Carterets--it is said that they were compelled to part with it by reason of their lavish expenditure on the thankless Stuart cause. In the so-called "Battery" at the back of the Manor-House is one of the old guns that were given by Elizabeth to Helier de Carteret. It is inscribed, "Don de Sa Majest? la Royne Elizabeth, au Seigneur de Serq, A.D. 1572." Of the smaller islands of the Norman archipelago only a word or two need be added here. Roughly halfway between Sark and Guernsey, and separated from each other by a narrow passage that is difficult to navigate by reason of its hidden rocks and surging tides, are the small twin islands of Jethou and Herm. The latter is now occupied by a German Prince, the great-grandson of the famous Prussian leader, the exact place of whose meeting with Wellington after the field of Waterloo--whether at Belle Alliance, or farther along the road towards Genappe--has often been made the topic of historical discussion, and is anyhow the subject of a well-known picture. Jethou is considerably the smaller of the two, and is principally devoted to the purpose of a rabbit-warren. In Herm are some remains of the old Chapel of St. Tugual, incorporated with the outbuildings of the present manor-house. Previous to 1770 Herm was inhabited by deer; and Mr. Bicknell tells us that they "used to take advantage of the tide to swim over to the Vale in Guernsey to feed, returning on the next tide." Certainly it is lucky that there are now no deer in Herm, since they would not find much pasture now at Vale. Jethou and Herm belong to Guernsey, and once, no doubt, were physically parts of it. As seen from St. Peter Port, with Sark dimly descried on the distant horizon, they still contribute largely to Guernsey's most charming seascape. Alderney and Sark, again, have each their attendant isle. Jersey alone, though the biggest of them all, is a planet without a satellite. The islet peculiar to Sark is Brecqhou, or the Ile des Marchants, which lies off its west coast, and is separated from it by the narrow Gouliot Strait, only a few hundred yards wide. Though measuring more than seventy acres, and possessed of a small landing-place, it is at present as innocent of human habitation as was Sark itself immediately before the coming of Helier de Carteret. Burhou is situated at a considerably greater distance to the north-west of Alderney, from which it is separated by the never-resting Swinge. This is, perhaps, the least visited among all the lesser islands, as is Alderney itself among the major four. INDEX Alderney, 54, 32, 46, 53, 57, 61, 62 Architecture, 8 Amy, Dean, 42 Bailiff Helier Gosselin, 42 Bandinel, David, Dean, 13-16 Bandinel, James, 16 Bandinels and Carterets, quarrel of, 121 Beaumont, 24 Bl?cher, Prince, 60 Bordeaux Harbour, 44 Braye, Alderney, 54 Brecqhou, 61 Burhou, 62 Cabbage-stalks, giant, 19 Carteret, 5, 9 Carteret, Helier de, 58, 59, 60, 62 Carteret, Lady, 13, 14 Carteret, Sir George, 15 Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page |
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