August Memories

August Memories

August, before the summer wanes
The early dusk, the darkening sky,
Near to the harvest of the grains
Shortening days come by and by

Now dancing round the fairy ring
And gathering of the fire wood
A time of lament now to sing
Of longer summers, childhood

Mushrooms grow beneath the trees
And foraging we go, the olden ways
The final flowering calls the bees
And sunset comes, with fading rays

And now there is sadness in the air
Remembering much so very fair

Gas in Jersey - Part 3

Mid-Victorian street lamps; two of the many types in use.
The last street lamp using gas in Jersey was extinguished 17 September 1970 

Continuing with a "A Brief History Of The Jersey Gas Company" compiled by Roger Long from research by Robin S Cox and Rene H Le Vaillant.

The town had grown a great deal by this time and in September 1836 Edge bought more land to the west of his gas works on which he erected coal stores.

In May 1838. as a result of what were described as “injudicious" arrangements with Edge, the street lighting ceased. The lighting always did cease during the four summer months and for the four nights of the full moon. but an atmosphere had developed between Edge and the consumers such that this termination of street lighting was considered to be Edge’: fault. High prices and poor quality gas led to dissatisfaction and on 18th June 1839 a meeting was held to force a reduction in the price of the gas or to see the setting up of a rival organisation.

The founders of the new St Heller's Union Gaslight Company informed Mr Edge that, unless the price was reduced, many shop proprietors would cease to use his gas as from 1st July 1839. No reduction was forthcoming and several consumers did return to using oil or candles. In August 1839, however. Thomas Edge announced that with effect from the previous 1st June he had reduced the price of gas from 15s 0d a thousand cubic feet to 12s 6d for private consumers, and to 12s 0d for commercial users.

The year 1844 was one of financial depression during which the consumers objected, for a second time, to the high prices of gas and fittings. Clement Perchard, one of the protesters in 1839, who had now replaced Peckston as the local Manager, announced to the proposers of yet another rival company that the price of gas would be reduced to 10s 0d a thousand cubic feet as from the following 29th March.

The growth of the town and the second attempt to form a rival company caused Thomas Edge to become very much more active locally. Between 1845 and 1852 he bought more land to the west of his coal stores and six houses in Bath Street which include the offices of the present Company.

Agreement was reached with the parochial authorities of St Saviour for street lighting as far as the church, which was inaugurated on l6th March 1850. And negotiations began with the three parishes involved in the lighting of the road to St Aubin.

Openings

Openings

Inside my Church, all is still and quiet,
All locked up because of blight;
And dust gradually settles down,
Like a finest gossamer gown,
Upon the altar. The pews empty:
None for Christ on the cross to see;
And the organ silent, no sweet singing,
Clocks stopped, bells ceased ringing;
As if time held its breath, paused a while,
Looking down along the empty aisle:
Cemented stones, sea sand and lime,
The moment: a gap in interstitial time;
O still, small voice of calm: patient be,
As time ticks away, rocks worn by sea,
From ages past, has seen the years,
And all the joys and all the fears;
Ancient limpet shells upon the walls,
Fading from sight, eventide fast falls:
The dark times, the times of dread,
When life was hanging by a thread;
Plague came, the congregation fell:
All people that on earth do dwell
Are frail, dying as the disease spread:
Give us today our daily bread;
But the baker was taken in the night,
So many dead, such sorry plight;
And fear came again to stay within:
The Puritan, of zeal, seeking sin,
Smashed stain glass, whitened walls,
The glory of the Middle Ages falls;
A reformation, old ways swept aside,
And nowhere to flee, nowhere to hide;
And once more the lock turns in the door,
Silencing the distant sea upon the shore,
Shutting out the sinner, the Puritan laws
No more singing within choir stalls;
It is dark and cold again and no one there:
Lockdown: a precaution fuelled by fear;
But the Christ looks down from altar stone,
God became man: bone of my bone,
And waits: patience can wait a thousand days,
To stay in silence, until that mighty praise,
The door unlocked, open, flung wide,
The sound returns of the turning tide;
Openings: I was blind but now can see,
And in they come, pray on bended knee:
Praise to the almighty, and peace on earth,
The choir sing carols of a child’s birth.

Gas In Jersey - Part 2

The first gasworks. c. 1831; watercolour by an unknown artist

Continuing with a "A Brief History Of The Jersey Gas Company" compiled by Roger Long from research by Robin S Cox and Rene H Le Vaillant.

First Steps

As with so many things it is thought that the ancient Chinese were the first to make use of a gas obtained from coal but it was not until William Murdoch, in Redruth, Cornwall began examining the possibilities of its application to industrial heating and lighting in 1792 that the age of coal gas was born. Early examples of its use were at the Soho works of Boulton and Watt in Birmingham which were lit in 1798, and the Lyceum Theatre in London in 1803.

Some ten years after the peace of 1815 Jersey property developers in St Helier embarked upon a building programme which was to last for about twenty years. As early as 1827 the local press observed that it was time the streets were lit by gas, if only to protect the public from accidents which were continually occurring after dark, occasioned by piles of building materials left in the public thoroughfares.

The island was then under the control of a two-party system. The ‘Rose’ or Liberal party had a majority in the States and in the Parish of St Helier at this time and were not in favour of great public expenditure, which included the scheme for public street lighting. The opposing political party, the ‘Laurel’ or Conservatives, favoured the introduction of all things new, for their supporters had embarked on the fine new development of the town.

Throughout 1828 the need for street lighting was brought before the eyes of the newspaper-reading public and, with the Laurel party now in the ascendant, some excitement was caused when it was learned that Thomas Edge of the Westminster Gas Works itself had visited the Channel Islands with a view to extending his interests. He met with some resistance in both the islands, in Jersey it being pointed out by some that no self-respecting people were out after 9 p.m., that at most times the moon provided sufficient light and that the local candle-making establishments, of which there were five, would suffer very greatly if this piped gas was to become commonplace in private houses.

Edge persevered and at a meeting of the Parish of St Helier on 28th April 1830 he was granted permission to dig up public roads to lay the necessary conduits.

On 7th June 1830, he bought from Philippe de Quettevllle, the Laurel Constable of St Helier, twenty-four and a half perches of ground in what was then known as Le Jardin de Middleton. This plot had an eighty-foot frontage both on La Ruette de la Commune to the north, now Gas Place, and on a new private road, now Robin Place. The surrounding area was at the time truly industrial and contained a ropewalk, slaughterhouses and one of the island’s principal brickflelds.

Edge had for his local manager Thomas Snowdon Peckston. They advertised for local builders to construct two masonry gas reservoirs. 32 feet wide by 16 feet 6 inches deep, and a 5 feet 6 inches wide syphon pit, and by August 1830 the press had noted the laying down of conduits in various streets of the town.

At a meeting of the States of Jersey on 15 February 1831 a report of the Harbours and Piers Committee recommended that public gas lighting should be installed around the harbour which then consisted of the Old North Pier, Commercial Buildings, Le Quai des Marchands and the New South Pier only.

The long-awaited supply of coal gas to the public took place on Saturday 12 March 1831. The successful inauguration of the network was marked by the illumination of what is now the United Club in the Royal Square by a large star and the letters A R (Altesse Royale) on the following Monday 14 March.

Plan of the original works in Gas Lane, c1840

Does Jersey have a Circumlocution Office?

Does Jersey have a Circumlocution Office?

From Dicken's Little Dorrit:

The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.

This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to study that bright revelation and to carry its shining influence through the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving — HOW NOT TO DO IT.

Through this delicate perception, through the tact with which it invariably seized it, and through the genius with which it always acted on it, the Circumlocution Office had risen to overtop all the public departments; and the public condition had risen to be — what it was.

Because the Circumlocution Office went on mechanically, every day, keeping this wonderful, all-sufficient wheel of statesmanship, How not to do it, in motion. Because the Circumlocution Office was down upon any ill-advised public servant who was going to do it, or who appeared to be by any surprising accident in remote danger of doing it, with a minute, and a memorandum, and a letter of instructions that extinguished him. It was this spirit of national efficiency in the Circumlocution Office that had gradually led to its having something to do with everything. Mechanicians, natural philosophers, soldiers, sailors, petitioners, memorialists, people with grievances, people who wanted to prevent grievances, people who wanted to redress grievances, jobbing people, jobbed people, people who couldn't get rewarded for merit, and people who couldn't get punished for demerit, were all indiscriminately tucked up under the foolscap paper of the Circumlocution Office.

Numbers of people were lost in the Circumlocution Office. Unfortunates with wrongs, or with projects for the general welfare (and they had better have had wrongs at first, than have taken that bitter English recipe for certainly getting them), who in slow lapse of time and agony had passed safely through other public departments; who, according to rule, had been bullied in this, over-reached by that, and evaded by the other; got referred at last to the Circumlocution Office, and never reappeared in the light of day. Boards sat upon them, secretaries minuted upon them, commissioners gabbled about them, clerks registered, entered, checked, and ticked them off, and they melted away. In short, all the business of the country went through the Circumlocution Office, except the business that never came out of it; and its name was Legion.

And did those feet...

Something amusing today. I need hardly mention which well known hymn I am using as the framework!

And did those feet in recent time,
Walk upon Jersey’s shoreline green?
And was sea lettuce on which we plod
On Jersey’s unpleasant beaches seen?
And did that countenance mixed with brine,
Shine forth there in shoreline strands?
And was a great heap gathered here
Among these green unwholesome sands?
Bring me my tractor, now so bold
Bring me my clearance I desire!
Bring me my rakes, O weed unfold!
Bring me my metal spokes of wire!
I will not cease from mental fight;
Nor shall my rake sleep in my hand
Til we have cleared this awful mess
From Jersey’s green unpleasant sand.

Gas In Jersey - Part 1

Gas In Jersey

A Brief History Of The Jersey Gas Company compiled by Roger Long from research by Robin S Cox and Rene H Le Vaillant 

JERSEY GAS COMPANY LIMITED

Directors
Peter Gilroy Blampied (Chairman)
John Roland Christopher Riley
Gerald Francis Voisin
Eric Ivor Messenger (Managing)
John Harold Vint
Colin Charles Beverley Sutton
Anthony Paul Langlois

Engineer and Assistant Manager
M. J. O’Keefle.

Secretary and Accountant
R. G. Le Blancq

Address:91 Bath Street, St. Helier 
March 1981

JOSEPH MORRIS 

Manager. Jersey Gas Light Company. 1862-1911

JERSEY GAS COMPANY

President / Chairman

T. Edge 1831-1856
E. Néel Jnr 1856-1873
G. H. Horman 1873-1879
J. Gibaut 1879-1887
M. Gallichan 1887-1902
A. J. Aubin 1902-1930
C. B. Buttfield 1930-1935
J. A. Perrée 1935-1954
C. W. D. Aubin. CBE 1954-1963
Jurat L. V. Bailhache 1963-1979
Jurat P. G. Blampied 1979-

MANAGER/MANAGING DIRECTOR
T. S. Peckston 1831-1843
C. Perchard 1843-1860
E. Néel Jnr 1860-1862
J. Morris 1862-1911
H. Morris 1911-1939
S. P. Pepin. OBE 1939 — 1961
W. Wedgwood 1961-1971
E. I. Messenger 191 —

Arial View of the works. 1954 

Suppression of the Monasteries: Germany and the Holy Roman Empire

Suppression of the Alien Priories and Dissolution of the Monasteries

Jersey never saw the dissolution of the monasteries which happened later in England. That is because King John, having lost Normandy, decided that the priories in Jersey whose mother houses were in France, should be suppressed – they were considered “alien priories”.

Now we all know about the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell, and that is invariable seen either as a good thing – they were corrupt and venal and had lost sight of their founding purpose – or as a bad thing – it was an anti-Catholic act!

The speed of it and the fact that it is part of English history – taught in schools, presented in history programmes – mean that it has become famous – or infamous.

But I began to thinking about Europe, for there were once thousands of monastic orders across Europe, not just in those territories which became Protestant, but also the Catholic heartlands. And yet there are not many around today. So what happened to them?

Protestant Germany

As might have been expected in Europe, closures also began in Germany. The significance here is the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) which ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) in the Holy Roman Empire, with the Habsburgs (rulers of Austria and Spain) and their Catholic allies on one side, battling the Protestant powers (Sweden, Denmark, and certain Holy Roman principalities) allied with France, which was Catholic but strongly anti-Habsburg under king Louis XIV.

Soon after this, with Protestant Germany, more than a hundred monasteries and innumerable other religious foundations disappeared.

Josephinism: The Move to a Secular State

But parts of the German Empire remained attached to the Catholic faith. The major change came with the Emperor Joseph II.

“Josephinism” was a termed used for the collective domestic policies of Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (1765–1790). During the ten years in which Joseph was the sole ruler of the Habsburg Monarchy (1780–1790), he attempted to legislate a series of drastic reforms to remodel Austria in the form of what liberals saw as an ideal "Enlightened" state.

Regarding the Catholic Church, Joseph was virulently opposed to what he called "contemplative" religious institutions, which he saw as reclusive institutions that were seen as doing nothing positive for the community.

By Joseph's decree, Austrian bishops could not communicate directly with the Curia anymore. More than 500 of 1,188 monasteries in Austro-Slav lands (and a hundred more in Hungary) were dissolved, and 60 million florins taken by the state. This wealth was used to create 1,700 new parishes and welfare institutions.

The monasteries of Styria were soon closed, though some houses escaped at this time (Kremsmünster, Lambach, Admont). All those in Carinthia and the Tyrol were suppressed. The emperor showed no consideration toward the venerable Abbey of St. Martin of Pannonia and its dependencies. In Hungary the Benedictines were entirely wiped out.

The death of Joseph II put an end to this policy, without, however, stopping the spread of those opinions which had incited it. His brother, Leopold II (d. 1792) allowed things to remain as he found them, but Francis II (Francis I of Austria, son of Leopold II) undertook to repair some of the ruin, permitting religious to pronounce solemn vows at the age of twenty-one.

Bavaria

At the same time, The Elector Maximilian (Joseph) III (1745-77) began in Bavaria a work of suppression of monastic orders which was carried on by his successors down to the Elector Maximilian Joseph IV, Napoleon's ally, who became King Maximilian I of Bavaria in 1805 (d. 1825).

During the secularization of 1802–1803, monastic lands and buildings were seized by the state or sold. Bavaria became a secular state and many monasteries, although still referred to as such, nowadays house schools, businesses or even luxurious holiday accommodation.

The religious orders in Bavaria were first deprived of all property rights and prohibited to receive novices. The convents of the mendicant orders (Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Carmelites) and the religious houses of women were the first to fall. Then came the turn of the Canons Regular and the Benedictines. The cathedral monasteries were not spared. Among the abbeys that disappeared in 1803 may be mentioned the following: St. Blasien of the Black Forest, St. Emmeran of Ratisbon, Andechs, St. Ulrich of Augsburg, Michelsberg, Benedictbeurn, Ertal, Kempten, Metten, Oberaltaich, Ottobeurn, Scheyern, Tegernsee, Wessobrünn.

North Germany

The monasteries in other parts of North Germany met with the common fate of all church property. On the left bank of the Rhine they were suppressed when that territory was annexed to France by the Peace of Luneville, 9 February, 1801.

The Diet of Ratisbon (3 March, 1801- February, 1803) reconstructed German States under the influence of France and Russia and as a consequence most of the ecclesiastical estates were abolished.

Besides her twenty-five ecclesiastical principalities and her eighteen universities, Catholic Germany lost all her abbeys and her religious houses for men: their property was given to Bavaria, Prussia, and Austria. As to the religious houses for women, the princes were to consult with bishops before proceeding to expel their inmates. The future reception of novices was forbidden. In the Netherlands, the Principality of Liège, and the portions of Switzerland annexed by France, the religious houses disappeared completely.

Concluding remarks

It is clear that a major force in the suppression of the monasteries was the Emperor Joseph II, who was concerned to modernise the Empire according to the ideals of the Enlightenment; he was always positive that the rule of reason would produce the best possible results in the shortest time.

As with England, a major barrier to some reforms was the power of the Catholic church, and while not breaking from Rome, Joseph was determined to limit its influence, hence the suppression of the monasteries, which by this time, as in England, had strayed far from their founder’s ideals and were wealthy institutions, effectively rich landlords who contributed little to society. Monasteries owned nearly half of all Church land, and something like 20 per cent of all land.

In 1750, for example, Maria Theresa (the mother of Joseph II) commented that “no monastic House observes the limitations of its statutes, and many idlers are admitted; all this will call for a great remedy”.

But unlike Henry VIII, Joseph’s suppression of monasteries was based on an ideal, that of “utility. Contemplative orders and nunneries therefore fell easily to his axe. Only those monasteries were to survive that worked in caring for the sick, in education or providing pastoral services in parishes. 

What mattered to Joseph was whether those religious houses brought benefits (hence “utility”) to the state. While Joseph dissolved monasteries that did not fit his criteria, he also transferred their resources to parishes and schools. 

In a move to more control over the church, clergymen were also deprived of the tithe and ordered to study in seminaries under government supervision, while bishops had to take a formal oath of loyalty to the crown. 

At the same time, his enlightened despotism included also the Patent of Toleration, enacted in 1781, and the Edict of Tolerance in 1782. The Patent granted religious freedom to the Lutherans, Calvinists, and Serbian Orthodox and the Edict extended religious freedom to the Jewish population.

By the time of his death in 1790, Joseph had cut off the Austrian Church from Rome, dissolved one-third of the monasteries in the Habsburg Empire, made marriage a state matter, granted toleration to Protestants, controlled clerical education, and restricted many religious activities.

And yet he was also part of a general trend against monastic orders and towards a more secular society across Europe. The religious wars that had been fought since the reformation has shown the bankruptcy of theocratic absolutism, and the gradual rise of tolerance and consequent reduction and movement against Papal control and influence.

The Desert

This was prompted by the current heatwave reaching 35.3C in Jersey, and also thinking about hot places, hence the desert. But the desert is not just a place, it is also a metaphor for a land of lockdown, and isolation. Hence the reference to the "Desert Fathers", those who lived a life of solitude in the desert, and the oasis, because wherever there is a desert, there have also been places of calm for the weary traveller. I thought in particular of that pictured above, the oasis in Southern Tunisia, which I had the good fortune to visit in my late teens. It has springs, and springs in a desert are surely a sign of hope.

My father was driving our rented car, and asked the way of a man walking by the side of the road - he offered to show us the way, and the oasis, if we would drop him home. Home was a multi-generational collection of wooden bungalows, all scrupulously clean and tidy, and where the women dressed my mother in traditional Tunisian clothes. It was wonderful hospitality, and that has always been associated in my mind with that oasis. An oasis is not just a place, it can also be hospitality to the lost traveller.

The Desert

In the desert, air is liquid heat
Searing the lungs, breath is hard
Sand is burning beneath feet
The body wounded, scarred

Enclaves with the desert sand
Monks eke out a meagre life
The spirit with a praying hand
Away from world torn by strife

An oasis means water and shade
Palm trees beckon, rest a while
For this weary traveller prayed
A break from the time of trial

The desert here of faith and doubt
Hope springs in time of drought

Victoria Tower

This article dates from the late 1970s when there was an observatory dome on top of the tower, just visible in the above picture. I have also an extract on this from my book "Victoria College: A Chronicle 1972-1979" (available on Amazon in paperback or kindle edition) for the year 1975:

April saw the official opening of the Victoria Tower observatory. This was a facility available to all schools in Jersey through the Victoria Tower Astronomical Society, which itself, as the name implies, had close links with the College.

Victoria Tower

Here is an example of a true Martello Tower, such as are seen on the south coast of England, where about 150 of them were built. Eight were constructed in Jersey. All after 1800, and this one bears a stone over the main door with VR 1837. It has a narrow dry moat and is in a very commanding position above St Catherine's Bay. It is built in granite, and unlike some of the other examples, is not plastered.

Seen in the background is the breakwater, the result of anxiety over the activities of the French on the opposite coast. It was started in 1847; in 1852, when only one arm of the proposed deep water harbour was complete, work ceased. The advent of steam made it unnecessary, as shipping was no longer dependent on wind, but doubtless political events. and a rapprochement with France under Napoleon III, as well as the colossal cost of the project, also influenced the decision. The great breakwater in Alderney had the same history, but in our case the one arm was completed and so does not constitute a danger to shipping as does the unfinished arm in Alderney.

The white dome on the top of the tower is a housing over the telescope used by the Victoria College Astronomical Group, the tower offering an excellent observatory, and their activities being an equally good use for a tower which no longer has a defensive role to play.

A confusion of nationality, race and geography

According to the JEP:  

A SENIOR civil servant has been accused of playing the ‘race card’ during a Twitter spat with Jersey’s Australian community representative.

 The phrase in question was “such antipathy for an antipodean!’”

 An Antipodean, according to the dictionary, is a person from Australia or New Zealand.

 As far as I am aware, the fact of being an Australian or a New Zealander, is a reflection of national identity rather than racial identity.

 While the term “Asian” might be thought to be more certain, in terms of ethnicity this itself is a category with loose boundaries. As Wikipedia notes:

In parts of anglophone Africa, especially East Africa and in parts of the Caribbean, the term "Asian" is more commonly associated with people of South Asian origin, particularly Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans.  In South Africa the term Asian is used in the pan-continental sense. Due to the high number of Indians in South Africa, in official documentation the designation "Indian" is used to refer to both South- and East-Asians.

An academic study of who was considered Asian in America showed the same kind of  loose boundaries:

For White, Black, Latino, and most Asian Americans, the default for Asian is East Asian. While South Asians – such as Indians and Pakistanis – classify themselves as Asian, other Americans are significantly less likely to do so, reflecting patterns of “South Asian exclusion” and “racial assignment incongruity”. College-educated, younger Americans, however, are more inclusive in who counts as Asian, indicating that despite the cultural lag, the social norms of racial assignment are mutable.

But Australians, colloquially referred to as "Aussies", are people associated with the country of Australia, usually holding Australian citizenship. Their racial origins may vary enormously. And that’s not even considering Australia's indigenous peoples, comprising Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal Tasmanians and Torres Strait Islanders!

Now it is true that just as Australians refer to the people of England disparagingly as “Pommes”, and as one individual pointed out online:

It's not derogatory but there is in general a polite reluctance to use plural adjectives as nouns like Asiatics, the Japanese... and a preference for Asian people, Japanese people, etc. Perhaps Antipodeans falls in the same category?

But it also occurs quite naturally and not as any form of insult:

An Australian writer says: “"I published my first book in 1955, when I was living in London, at that time the great cultural metropolis for Antipodeans"

‘Antipodean wines’

‘Go into any bar in the county and before long the chances are you'll come across a member of the bar staff with that distinctive Antipodean twang.’

‘Apologies to any Antipodean readers; just throw another Turkey leg on the Barbie for me and I will be right over.’

But whatever the case, one thing is clear – it is not racist, unless we start defining membership of a race as equivalent to membership of a nation, which is clearly not the case.

 Those who have called out the politician for “playing the race card” are quite simply wrong. There is a an alarming tendency to play the racist card when it does not apply.

Escape into Light

Escape into Light

The city, alone, a land of shadows
Empty streets, strange masked folk
Time at this level crawls and slows
Such a heavy burden in this yoke

Saturn in the night, gleaming rings
Jupiter the mighty, still and bright
The harmony of the planets sings
And the moon rising, pale, white

At the beach, buckets and spades
Holiday in the sun, freedom’s cry
Time to leave behind the shades
Into sunlight, sand, sea and sky

Sometimes hope is all we need
Just as when we plant a seed