Jersey Our Island: Another Glory – Part 3

Published in 1950, this is an interesting snapshot of the Island and its customs as it was in the immediate post-war period, and not without humour. Most guide books of the time give the tourist information, or give the impressions of an outsider to the Island, but this is in "inside view", which is rarer. And a view on Queen's Valley, now submerged beneath water as a reservoir.

Jersey Our Island: Another Glory – Part 3

By Sidney Bisson

After the cold silence of the prehistoric tomb it was a relief to find the warm solitude of Queen's Valley, which lies half way between La Hougue Bie and the sea. It is here, supposedly, that Victor Hugo used to come and write when he could tear himself away from his contemplation of the ocean.

Le vallon oii je vans tous les jours est charmant,

Screin, abandonne, seul sous le firmament,

Picin de ronces en fleurs.

It cannot have changed much since he used to sit here and watch the sheep grazing and the little shepherdess drying her feet on the reeds after she had waded across the brook. There are no sheep left, certainly, but one might still write with equal truth

`if it were not for the sound of the workers in the fields, one might doubt the existence of an outer world.'

First the path  follows the brook, nestling under a bank of honeysuckle and bramble. Then it climbs away behind a shoulder to come out again when you are high enough to see the green valley spreading before you and the brook curling away into the distance through the lush meadows.

From the road at the bottom of the valley you catch a glimpse of Grouville Church, where, if you are anxious to return to St. Helier, you can climb a hill and see a view of which an enthusiastic nineteenth century writer exclaimed: `If a Person can behold the Scene in Spring, Summer, or Autumn without temporary Ecstasy, Science forbid that he should ever attempt to paint, or even criticise, a Landscape.'

Instead I followed a winding road into another green and quiet valley with a tributary brook. Though only slightly less enchanting than Queen's Valley it does not seem to have been deemed worthy of a name.

After this the road climbed steeply to give a sudden and unexpected view of Mont Orgueil and the French coast framed in a farmyard gate. And as we climb the scenery changes. Watered meadows give place to field after field of tomatoes, for this is some of the most productive land in the island. But now and then with characteristic Jersey suddenness the land dips and you catch another glimpse of the sea. To the South this time, just to remind us that we are on an island.

It is from one of these glimpses of the sea that a footpath dives down steeply to the tree-lined Swiss Valley, the last before reaching St. Helier. The immediate neighbourhood on the town side has been much built over, but so far the valley remains unspoilt.

In sad contrast is the Grands Vaux Valley to the North of St. Helier, which I visited another day. Here within easy reach of the town was a walk which the older guidebooks recommended. To-day a clutter of unsightly bungalows straddles the foot of the valley. Further up, the brook which ought to meander through the meadows is confined in an ugly concrete channel, as straight as if it had been drawn with a giant's ruler.

As if that were not enough, a row of unsightly poles carrying electric cables has been planted in the middle of the valley, when they might just as easily have been fixed along the road.

I pushed on sadly, wondering what the next indignity would be. It was revealed as I turned a corner a hideous dump stretching right across the valley, an attempt, apparently, to fill in the floor to make it suitable for building. I had never before felt quite so ashamed of my countrymen who could allow such desecration.'

[My anger was misdirected. I discovered later that a large reservoir was to  be built here not houses.]

As I struck up a road that would take me away from this scene of desolation, my anger was partly appeased by the sight of an attractive eighteenth century granite cottage. Since we have very little domestic architecture earlier than that, it is lucky for us that eighteenth century work in Jersey has something of the charm of English Tudor.

Across the road is a relic of a former resident's consideration for wayfarers (not that many come this

way, I imagine) a drinking fountain with the inscription

`Nornine Del Fons Viatoris. E. Stirling fecit, 1868.'

It is the same Mr. Stirling, I presume, who gave the pretentious name of Stirling Castle to a hideous Victorian mansion which stands a little further up the hill. Whoever he was, he would feel sorry, I am sure, if he knew that his fountain for wayfarers had run dry.

At the top of the hill are two unusually ornamental farmhouses, one obviously modernised, the other decently mellow, with the arms of the Poingdestre family worked into its walls.

Then, after passing a curious mixture of grazing cows and concrete bungalows, the road dips again into the other valley that runs towards St. Helier.

After the desecration of Grands Vaux I was prepared for anything in the Vallee des Vaux, as this other one is called. I remembered from my childhood ducks swimming on a brook and a picnic when we called at a farm for milk and were given goats' milk to the indignation of the adults in the party. That, I think, was when I first heard of the curious custom of the young people of St. Helier who during the month of May used to get up very early in the morning and go in parties to the nearest farms to drink milk warns from the cow.

My spirits went up when I rounded the corner. The brook still runs along the roadside, and under it, and out again on the other side. What is more, it is still a home for ducks. It is true that it has a rather tired look, as if it knew that before long it was going to suffer the fate of its neighbour. Still, it manages to stay above ground, and in a more or less natural channel, until it reaches the outskirts of St. Helier when it is excusable for it to disappear into the bowels of a laundry.

Not only did the brook stay by me all the way ; the whole valley remains pleasantly rural with its grassy slopes well dotted with gorse and trees. My friend Godfrey has since told me that the preservation of this valley so near St. Helier is due to the interest which the National Trust for Jersey has taken in it and the public spirit of its owners. The Trust, I gather, is seriously handicapped by lack of funds, a strange state of affairs in an island where appeals for charities are usually overwhelmingly successful.

What is wanted, of course, is a law scheduling the most beautiful parts of the island as perpetual open spaces, but my fellow Jerseymen object strongly to being told that they cannot build where they please.

If I had been writing a guide book and not taking a holiday, I can think of lots of other places I should have visited. There arc other valleys besides those I have written about, other hills besides those I have climbed. I have not been in all the parish churches, nor described all the archaeological curiosities. But nobody on a holiday wants to see everything, and I am not going for any more excursions. Unless, perhaps, I lean back in my armchair, prop my feet on my desk, and take an excursion into the future.