Beautiful Britain - The Smaller Channel Islands - Part 2

My history for the next few weeks will come from “The Channel Islands” by Joseph E Morris, B.A., published by London, Adam and Charles Black, 1911. It is fascinating because, firstly, it is a guidebook from 1911, depicting a Jersey before the Great War erupted across Europe, and secondly because it is very much an outsider looking in, and making very personal observations mingled with the history.

Beautiful Britain - The Smaller Channel Islands - Part 2: Sark, Herm, etc.

Sark

To Sark we come at last in our long exploration of the Channel Islands, and for Sark we may well be content to have waited patiently, and to have wandered far. For this, by universal acclamation, is certainly the gem of the whole group.

Already we have often seen it in the distance-a long, level line of cliff (save where broken by the Coupee)-from the north coast of Jersey, or from the piers at St. Peter Port. Now, as we approach it more closely, threading the narrow strait between Herm and Jethou, and doubling the cliffs of Little Sark, at the south corner of the island, this hitherto unbroken, monotonous wall begins to resolve itself into an infinity of broken cliffs and promontories, isolating and half concealing a thousand fairy-like bays.

Surely nowhere else is another coast like this - everywhere so irregular in its general trend and outline - everywhere so deeply bitten into by the mordant unrest of the sea. Sark, we have said already, is little else than coast ; and certainly it is the coast which first arrests and charms us, and the coast which lingers last and most clearly in our memory, when other impressions begin to be obliterated, or vanish altogether in the steady lapse of years.

Not a yard of this gracious girdle of cliff is monotonous, or repeats itself, or is even grim (as parts of the coast of Alderney are grim), or is relatively less interesting, or less beautiful, or dull; everywhere and always it is singularly lovely, and everywhere and always at the same high pitch.

There is really very little to be said about Sark, except that the whole island is beautiful throughout : there is nothing to be gained by giving a long catalogue of successive promontories, caves, and bays. It was thus that Olivia made a schedule of her beauty-" item, two lips indifferent red ; item, two grey eyes, with lids to them ; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth "-and at the end of the inventory we have no better picture of the real Olivia than before she was thus appraised in detail.

The Colonization of Sark

The history of Sark, for so small an island, is unusually interesting, and in some respects instructive. It is set out by Miss Carey in an interesting chapter, and some of its episodes may be summarized here.

Sark, like its sister islands, must have been occupied by neolithic man, for the remains of two poor dolmens still exist in the island, and formerly, no doubt, there were very many more. St. Magloire, in the sixth century, built a chapel and founded a small monastery in the island, but apparently he found it unpopulated when first he arrived.

In the middle of the fourteenth century the island was inhabited by a crew of lawless wreckers, who were a menace to the navigation of the whole Manche. The merchants of Rye and Winchelsea then put their heads together, and agreed to do by subtlety what they could not effect by force.

Landing on Sark with an armed force must well-nigh have been impossible, till Helier de Carteret cut his tunnel through the rocks, when he colonized the island in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The merchants, accordingly, constructed a piece of strategy that may well have been borrowed from the Trojan horse, but in that case was certainly invested with much ingenious detail of its own.

The story is told by Sir Walter Raleigh in his History of the World, though, as Miss Carey points out, he post-dates the incident by some 100 years, and describes it as having occurred to the crew of a Flemish ship.

"Yet by the industry of a gentleman of the Netherlands [the island] was in this sort regained. He anchored in the Road with one Ship, and, pretending the death of his Merchant, he besought the French that they might bury their Merchant in hallowed Ground, and in the Chapel of that Isle Whereto (with Condition that they should not come ashore with any Weapon, not so much as with a Knife), the French yielded."

"Then did the Flemings put a coffin into their Boat, not filled with a Dead Carcass, but with Swords, Targets, and Harquebuzes. The French received them at their Landing, and, searching everyone of them so narrowly as they could not hide a Penknife, gave them leave to draw their Coffin up the Rocks with great difficulty . The Flemings on the Land, when they had carried their Coffin into the Chapel, shut the Door to them, and, taking their Weapons out of the Coffin, set upon the French."'

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, Cosme 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 Majeste 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 [Prince Blücher], 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.