Guernsey in 1974 – Part 1

Guernsey in 1974 – Part 1

This is an extract from Peter Haining’s guide book of 1974, which is as much interest today for the historian as to the tourist, as many of the places and industries described in his book have long vanished. Please do not take it as a current guide. I have taken time to annotate some of the changes in italics.

Introduction

Guernsey is sometimes referred to as the “Island of Greenhouses” —and certainly should you be flying to it the view from above is of acre upon acre of glass. The impression is not altogether correct, however, for only about one fifteenth of the island is devoted to greenhouses, and in the remainder are houses for the population of 50,000, some delightful wooded and rural areas, plus enough beaches, bays and attractions to keep the average visitor happy for weeks.

The description of Guernsey as an "Island of Greenhouses" is largely outdated due to the collapse of the island's commercial horticultural industry, leaving many structures derelict rather than actively cultivated. Additionally, Guernsey's population has increased from the historical estimate of 50,000 to approximately 64,600 residents today.

The island is the second largest of the Channel Island group and covers 24 square miles. It is seven miles long by three miles wide and has over 25 miles of coastline. The ancient name for Guernsey was Greneze, “Green Isle” and as the visitor makes use of the 300 miles of roadway he will soon see how true this is. 

The Claim: That the ancient name was Greneze, meaning "Green Isle." This is a persistent folk-etymology myth. The name "Guernsey" is actually of Old Norse (Viking) origin. The suffix -ey is the Viking word for "island" (seen also in Jersey and Alderney). While older medieval records used spellings like Gernesey or Gernezeye, the root Guern- is believed to stem from a Viking personal name like Grani, or the Old Norse word grǫn (meaning spruce or pine)—not "green". To the Romans, the island was known as Lisia or Sarnia.

The Bailiwick of Guernsey, which includes Alderney, Sark, Herm and Jethou, is a self-governing community and the people have a fierce spirit of independence. They make their own laws (some of which have a distinctly feudal severity about them), impose their own taxes and even mint their own currency. The island has its own Norman-French patios which, although not used a great deal today, can still be heard spoken in the outlying communities.

When this guide was written, this was a direct nod to Sark, which was famous for being the last feudal state in Europe. Sark was ruled by a Seigneur and a parliament (Chief Pleas) made up of hereditary landowners. However, in 2008, Sark officially abolished its 450-year-old feudal system and held its first fully democratic elections to comply with modern human rights laws. While ancient customary laws still influence the islands, the "feudal severity" is a thing of the past.

The guide is referring to Guernesiais (Guernsey French). In the 1970s, it could still be heard naturally among older generations in rural parishes like Torteval or St. Saviour's. Today, it is no longer spoken as a primary community language and is classified as critically endangered, though intensive language revitalization efforts are being made in local schools.

The spirit of independence has persisted throughout much of the island’s history and smuggling between the Continent and Britain was one of the islanders’ chief methods of earning a living during the 17th and 18th centuries. Throughout the island the visitor can find caves and cellars where the ‘‘free traders” hid their booty. The climate on Guernsey is particularly suited to maturing wines and spirits and consequently huge quantities of raw liquor found its way onto the island—and helped to put considerable fortunes into the pockets of local cask makers and smugglers.

The historical narrative regarding Guernsey's 17th- and 18th-century smuggling economy is largely accurate, serving as a primary economic driver due to the island's strategic tax-exempt status rather than its climate. While romanticized caves are tied to smuggler lore, contraband was primarily stored in merchant cellars.

Today there is no need for smuggling spirits either in or out of the island, because prices here are as low as anywhere in the world. The main bone of contention, however, is over licensing hours. During the summer period the permitted hours for hotels and inns are 10.00 a.m. to 11 p.m. from Monday to Saturday. But on Sunday all bars are closed and you can only get a drink in the hotel where you are staying or with a meal. This is a point to remember if you are out on that day. (Just as it is to remember that petrol is not sold in Guernsey on Sundays.)

Guernsey's historical restrictions regarding Sunday alcohol sales and petrol availability are heavily outdated and have been completely dismantled. Standard venues can now legally serve alcohol on Sundays from noon until late, and fuel stations operate regular Sunday hours. 

An interesting item to look out for when you are in a bar is the “Black List’ pinned up behind the counter. This is a selection of photographs and descriptions of islanders who have been barred from the local taverns. Guernsey takes a very strong view over drunkenness and to go on this list (which is circulated to every inn keeper and hotel proprietor on the island) is considered the severest and most effective form of punishment. Some offenders have even been known to plead in court that they are put on the list in order to halt their excessive drinking!

The account of Guernsey’s historical "Black List"—a court-mandated registry of individuals barred from local taverns under the Intoxicating Liquor (Prohibition Orders) (Guernsey) Law, 1960—is historically accurate. Chronic offenders occasionally requested inclusion on the list as a legal deterrent to curb excessive drinking, though the practice was eventually phased out in favour of modern privacy frameworks and health initiatives.

Guernsey is divided up into ten parishes and although they have not been dealt with separately in this book, all the interesting sights and attractions they contain are mentioned in the various sections. The bays and beaches have also been treated individually—with their facilities and accessibility—so as to simplify selecting a spot. The coastline is probably Guernsey’s outstanding feature, particularly along the southern edge which has few accessible beaches but provides breath-taking views. Along many other stretches there are ancient remains to be seen and some incredible caves with histories of smuggling and piracy. 

Of all the caves on the island the one which should not be missed is the Creux Mahie at Havre du Bon Repos which can be reached from the road named Chemin le Roi going to Torteval. The cave, which is the largest on the island, is entered by a small hole which suddenly breaks out into a passage some 200 feet long and varying in height from 20 to 60 ft. A torch is needed to explore the cavern, but don’t waste time wondering about the mysterious black marks on the walls—they were caused by the Fire torches carried by fishermen using the place in the past. In the bay below this there is a beautiful rock pool called the ‘““Venus Bath” where bathing is possible.

The guidebook implies you can simply walk in with a torch. This is no longer true. Le Creux Mahié sits entirely on private land and is closed to the general public due to safety, land ownership, and steep, dangerous cliff descents. The only way to access it today is via specially permitted eco-tours, such as those occasionally organized by Outdoor Guernsey.

The author has mixed up two different islands. The famous, deep-water tidal rock pool known as the Venus Pool (or Venus Bath) is actually located on the neighbouring island of Sark (specifically on the rugged headland of Little Sark). It is not at the foot of Creux Mahié

The visitor will obviously spend time in the capital town, St. Peter Port with its tiers of ancient buildings (many of which were built with the spoils from smuggling and piracy), and a separate section is devoted to it. 

No visit would be complete, either, without a trip to the huge reservoir at St. Saviour’s. This is one of the finest pieces of construction work on the Channel Islands and no less impressive because it has been created by such a comparatively small community. The reservoir holds 240 million gallons of water and covers over 38 acres. Beneath its tranquil surface lie three valleys in which there were seven farmhouses and approximately 600 trees. The total cost of the project was £400,000 which is quite a sum for a small island to raise! Guernsey also has its own £257,000 sea water distillation plant which was opened in 1960 and now produces 500,000 gallons of fresh water each day if required.

While the sea water distillation plant opened in 1960 at a cost of £257,000 to produce up to 500,000 gallons daily, it proved uneconomical and was permanently decommissioned in 1970.

But despite progress such as this, the island still clings tenaciously to many old customs and superstitions. For instance the author was told that many islanders believe that a criminal can be exposed by using a Bible and a key. This is effected by placing the key upright on a certain text in the Bible and then getting two people to hold the key upright with their marriage fingers. The name of the suspected criminal is now spoken and if the Bible moves under the key, the person is guilty. More customs are mentioned later in the book, including details of witchcraft, which has long been practised on the island and is still believed to exist in the more remote areas.

Known formally as coscinomancy or bibliomancy, this was a widespread European folk custom. While the guidebook treats it as a uniquely local superstition, 19th-century accounts compiled in Sir Edgar MacCulloch's seminal book Guernsey Folk-Lore confirm that old islanders heavily relied on the "Bible and key" to resolve neighbourhood thefts without involving the courts. It is no longer practiced or believed by modern islanders, existing purely as an entry in historical folklore archives.

Guernsey has one of the darkest histories of witch trials in the British Isles. Between 1560 and 1640, the Royal Court of Guernsey tried over 100 people for sorcery, resulting in 44 people being tortured, hanged, and burned at the stake. By 1974, these supernatural beliefs had effectively vanished from daily life, making the guidebook's claim that witchcraft "is still believed to exist" a massive exaggeration designed to sell books to tourists.

The author's claim that people were still actively using the "Bible and key" or hiding from witches in 1974 is a romanticized embellishment. The last actual legal trial involving witchcraft in Guernsey occurred in January 1914 (the case of Aimée Lake, who was prosecuted for fraud and fortune-telling after selling charms to ward off evil spirits). By the 1970s, the island was fully modernized, highly educated, and transitioning rapidly into a global financial centre. No one in 1974 was seriously consulting a Bible and a key to solve a local crime.

The tourist trade now probably accounts for a large percentage of Guernsey’s income, but the tomato growing industry is not far behind. The industry has grown up over a comparatively short time and there is a story told on the island that when the first tomatoes were introduced from Spain in 1865 and grown locally, many housewives refused to have anything to do with them, believing they were poisonous! Today Guernsey tomatoes are popular all over Great Britain and the Continent and bring in an annual revenue of about £9,500,000 from the millions of trays which are exported. The particularly mild climate of Guernsey (snow and frost are very rare and it is often possible to bathe on Christmas Day) mean that the plants can go in the ground in December and be ripe for sale before any other competitors. There are plenty of opportunities to visit tomato greenhouses, and an inquiry to a grower will almost certainly result in an invitation to a conducted tour.

The author’s story about 1865 housewives refusing to touch tomatoes because they believed they were poisonous is 100% historically true. Because tomatoes belong to the Solanaceae (nightshade) family, they were widely feared across Europe for centuries. Wealthy Europeans also mistakenly blamed the tomato for lead poisoning—not realizing that the fruit's high acidity was actually leaching toxic lead out of their fancy pewter dinner plates!Guernsey did not embrace them commercially until the 1870s and 1880s once these fears were debunked.

The collapse of Guernsey's commercial tomato industry is one of the most dramatic economic turnarounds in the island's modern history. At its peak, the "Guernsey Tom" was a massive economic engine, utilizing over 2,000 vineries and employing 30% of the island's male workforce.

To beat UK and European competitors to market, Guernsey growers planted seeds in December. This required keeping millions of square feet of glasshouses intensely heated through the cold winter months using heavy oil boilers. When the global oil crises of the 1970s struck, the price of fuel skyrocketed, making the cost of heating the glasshouses mathematically unsustainable.

1979: The Second Oil Crisis and the Breaking Point. Fuel costs surge to a level where it officially costs more to grow and heat a Guernsey tomato than it is worth on the open market. Total acreage dedicated to tomatoes drops immediately by more than half, falling from 567 acres down to 240 acres over the next few years.

While Guernsey struggled with soaring oil costs, the Netherlands discovered vast reserves of cheap North Sea natural gas. The Dutch government heavily subsidized heating costs for their own greenhouse growers. Combined with advanced massive-scale automation, Holland completely undercut Guernsey's prices on the UK market.

Historically, Guernsey tomatoes were rushed from the harbour at St. Peter Port to English ports, then distributed nationwide via efficient British Rail fruit-train networks. Changes and cuts to the UK railway system disrupted these classic distribution lines, driving up transport freight costs.

July 1992: The official tourist-facing Guernsey Tomato Centre, which had opened in 1977 to champion the history and heritage of the crop, permanently winds up operations and shuts its doors

Disappearing Christian Thinkers: Maurice Wiles

Maurice Wiles (1923–2005) rounds out this vanishing act as the consummate academic insider whose radical revision of Christian doctrine was so polite, precise, and decorous that it failed to spark an enduring movement.

While his contemporary Dennis Nineham dismantled the historical reliability of the Bible, Wiles dismantled classical Christian dogma from the inside. As the Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University and the chairman of the Church of England’s Doctrine Commission, Wiles held the keys to the theological establishment. Yet, his legacy has faded because his elegant, rationalist critique of the supernatural ultimately left academic theology with nowhere to go.

His eclipse is a result of several defining characteristics of his work and career:

1. The Quiet Demolition of the Incarnation

Wiles is best remembered as the driving intellectual force behind the explosive 1977 book The Myth of God Incarnate, a collection of essays that caused a massive public outcry in the UK.

• The Argument: Wiles argued that orthodox Christian claims—specifically that Jesus of Nazareth was literally God incarnate—were not factual descriptions of reality. Instead, he argued that "incarnation" was a poetic, mythological way for the early Church to express Jesus’s profound awareness of God.
• The Erasure: Unlike Don Cupitt, who used this idea to launch a media career as a radical iconoclast, Wiles presented it with the dry, understated caution of an Oxford don. Because his presentation was so academic, once the initial media storm of 1977 passed, his ideas were folded into standard university debates rather than serving as the rallying cry for a vibrant, living movement.

2. A World Without Miracles (Deistic Tendencies)

In his 1986 Bampton Lectures, published as God’s Action in the World, Wiles took his critique to its logical conclusion by arguing against the idea of divine intervention.

• He asserted that God does not perform localized miracles, answer specific intercessory prayers, or alter the laws of nature. To Wiles, God's sole action is the single, ongoing act of creating and sustaining the universe.
• The Problem: By reducing God's activity to a hands-off, cosmic backdrop, Wiles's theology began to look indistinguishable from 18th-century Enlightenment Deism. For subsequent generations of theologians, a faith without a prayer-hearing, intervening God felt spiritually sterile. It offered very little nourishment for preaching, liturgy, or Christian practice, causing the Church to quietly move past it.

3. The Rebound of Orthodoxy

Wiles’s career peaked in the late 1970s and 1980s, during what seemed like the final triumph of secular, liberal enlightenment over traditional religion. However, he did not foresee the massive theological counter-revolution that followed.

• In the 1990s and 2000s, academic theology experienced a dramatic resurgence of orthodox, conservative, and post-liberal thought (such as Radical Orthodoxy).
• Thinkers like John Milbank and N.T. Wright argued that Wiles's rationalism was a dated product of Victorian skepticism. They reasserted a robust, supernatural, and historically grounded orthodox faith. Wiles’s polite skepticism suddenly looked like yesterday's news, trapped in a mid-century modernist paradigm.

4. The Scholar of the Past Who Undermined the Past

Wiles was initially a world-class patristic scholar—an expert on the early Church Fathers who hammered out the creeds in the 4th and 5th centuries. His books like The Making of Christian Doctrine are still praised for their historical clarity.

• The irony of his career is that he used his immense knowledge of the Church Fathers to argue that their conclusions (like the Nicene Creed) were historical accidents that modern people should abandon.
• Because he used patristics to dismantle patristic authority, he ended up in a no-man's-land: traditional patristic scholars found his conclusions unacceptable, while modern radical theologians found his focus on ancient texts boring and old-fashioned.

The Fourfold Collapse of British Liberal Theology

Looking at all four of these thinkers together, we can trace the precise trajectory of how mid-to-late 20th-century British theology vanished:

• John Macquarrie built a traditional cathedral but used modern existential scaffolding that eventually rotted away.
• Don Cupitt sawed off the branches of the Christian tree, declared the tree dead, and walked into secular mysticism.
• Dennis Nineham proved that the soil the tree was planted in (historical scripture) was highly unstable, but stayed in the shade of the tree anyway.
• Maurice Wiles used impeccable manners and Oxford prestige to neatly prune away every supernatural branch of the tree until there was nothing left but a bare trunk.

Disappearing Christian Thinkers: Dennis Nineham

Dennis Nineham (1921–2016) represents yet a third type of vanishing act: the radical biblical critic whose shocking ideas became so completely normalized that his own name was absorbed into the background noise of modern scholarship. [1]

Unlike Macquarrie (who was too moderate and systematic) or Cupitt (who became a post-Christian iconoclast), Nineham was an establishment academic. He held prestigious chairs at London, Cambridge, and Bristol, and served as Warden of Keble College, Oxford. Yet, his legacy has faded due to the unique way his specific breakthroughs were swallowed by time. [1, 2, 3]

His disappearance from the forefront of public memory is due to several intersecting factors:

1. The Death of the "Pelican Paperbacks" Shock Factor

Nineham’s most famous and lasting work was his 1963 commentary, The Gospel of Saint Mark, published by Pelican/Penguin. [1, 4]

• The Shock: In 1963, publishing a highly sceptical, German-style "Form Critical" analysis of Jesus in a cheap paperback for the general public was incendiary. Nineham argued that Mark’s Gospel was not an eyewitness biography of Jesus, but a collection of heavily edited preaching material designed to win converts. He cast deep doubt on whether we could know the literal, historical details of Jesus' life. [1, 4, 5]
• The Erasure: Today, many of Nineham's conclusions are often standard, foundational curriculum in almost every mainstream university and seminary globally. Because his radicalism became the textbook status quo, students read the concepts without needing to read the specific 1963 commentary that first shocked the British public. [6, 7]

2. Cultural Relativism Built a Dead End

Nineham took his historical skepticism a step further in his 1976 book, The Use and Abuse of the Bible. He argued that human cultures change so radically over time that it is effectively impossible for a 20th-century person to truly think like, or understand the mindset of, a 1st-century first-century Christian. [3, 8, 9]

• He famously used the example that if a man collapses frothing at the mouth, the New Testament authors see a demon; the Middle Ages see a chemical imbalance of "humours"; and the modern world sees an epileptic or psychiatric event. [9]
• Because he argued that the Bible is entirely locked in its own ancient, unbridgeable cultural past, his theology struggled to say anything constructive to the modern church. Once you argue that the text cannot easily speak across the centuries, you render yourself obsolete to theologians looking for active guidance.

3. High on Controversy, Low on Output

Despite holding the highest academic offices in the UK, Nineham was famously a "controversialist" rather than a prolific writer. [2]

• He was appointed to major chairs on the strength of brilliant lectures and tutorials rather than a mountain of published monographs.
• Aside from his St. Mark commentary and his epilogue to the notorious 1977 collection The Myth of God Incarnate (which argued that Jesus being the literal "Son of God" was a poetic metaphor), he published relatively little solid, multi-volume academic theology. Without a massive library of authored books, an academic's name rarely survives the generational shift. [2, 10]

4. The Churchman Who Cut His Own Branch

Nineham was an ordained Anglican priest who remained deeply, stubbornly loyal to the Church of England, its liturgy, and its synods until his death. This created an unsustainable paradox for his legacy: [1, 4]

• Secular skeptics didn't read him because he remained a devoted, church-going priest.
• Churchgoers and conservative theologians largely ignored him because his scholarship systematically dismantled the historical reliability of the gospels they preached. [1, 4]

The Trio Compared

If we look at the three thinkers together, we see the full collapse of mid-to-late 20th-century British radical theology:

• Macquarrie built a beautiful, elaborate house using a tool (existentialism) that people stopped using.
• Cupitt burnt the house down and walked away into the wilderness.
• Nineham meticulously took the historical foundations out from under the house, but then insisted on sitting in the living room anyway.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com

[2] https://www.churchtimes.co.uk

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org

[4] https://www.telegraph.co.uk

[5] https://www.amazon.co.uk

[6] https://www.amazon.com

[7] https://www.goodreads.com

[8] https://www.bristol.ac.uk

[9] https://www.thetimes.com

[10] https://www.thetimes.com

Disappearing Christian Thinkers: Don Cupitt

Don Cupitt (born 1934) presents a completely opposite type of "vanishing act" compared to John Macquarrie. While Macquarrie faded because his philosophical framework became outdated, Cupitt vanished because he deliberately stepped off the edge of traditional Christianity altogether, leaving both the church and academic theology behind.

As a Cambridge dean and the face of the radical Sea of Faith movement in the 1980s, Cupitt’s trajectory toward absolute "Christian Buddhism" or "solar living" became so extreme that he ceased to be a theologian in any conventional sense, effectively erasing his own place in the institutional memory of the Church.

His erasure stems from several sharp, self-inflicted and cultural departures:

1. The Shock of "Non-Realism"

Cupitt’s 1984 BBC television series and accompanying book, The Sea of Faith, popularized theological non-realism.

• The Core Idea: Cupitt argued that "God" is not an objectively existing being, creator, or entity out there in the universe. Instead, God is simply a spiritual ideal, a human projection, or a symbol of our highest ethical aspirations.
• The Fall-Out: By stripping Christianity of a real, objective God, a literal resurrection, and an afterlife, he turned theology into a branch of human psychology and linguistics. For the vast majority of practicing Christians, Cupitt was no longer reinterpreting the faith—he was introducing a disguised form of religious atheism.

2. A Movement Born and Died in the 1980s

For a brief moment, Cupitt was the most talked-about religious figure in Britain. He gathered a passionate following of clergy and laypeople who felt they could no longer believe in supernatural dogmas but still loved the aesthetic, moral, and community aspects of the Church.

• The Problem: The Sea of Faith network quickly ran into a structural dead end. If God is just a human construct and the church is just a club for ethical self-improvement, it is incredibly difficult to sustain institutional momentum.
• The Result: The movement aged out and shrank. Once the initial media shock factor wore off in the 1990s, mainstream theology largely ignored Cupitt, viewing his work as a spent firework of late-20th-century secularization rather than a lasting theological system.

3. Deliberate Self-Exile from the Church

Unlike other radical theologians (such as John Robinson, author of Honest to God, who remained an Anglican bishop), Cupitt eventually realized his positions were entirely incompatible with the Church of England.

• He stopped officiating at Holy Communion because he felt it was hypocritical to lead a liturgy directed at a personal God.
• He stopped attending church altogether, choosing instead to write increasingly idiosyncratic books on what he called "radical immanence," "lifeism," and "solar ethics" (the idea that humans should burn brightly and burn out, like the sun, without looking for eternal life).
• By severing his ties to the liturgy and the institution, he ensured that future generations of church historians and seminary students would treat his work as an eccentric footnote rather than a part of the living tradition.

4. Overtaken by Post-Modernism and the New Atheism

Cupitt’s writing style was highly fluid and fast-moving—he published over 50 books—but his ideas became trapped between two cultural waves:

• Philosophically: Academic theology moved toward Post-Liberalism and Radical Orthodoxy, which fiercely re-asserted traditional dogma and Christian narrative against secular critiques. Cupitt’s hyper-modernist scepticism suddenly looked old-fashioned.
• Culturally: In the 2000s, the "New Atheism" (led by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens) took over the public square. Secular people didn't want Cupitt's nuanced, churchless "religious textuality"; they preferred outright scepticism. Meanwhile, religious people wanted a robust, supernatural faith to counter the secular onslaught. Cupitt's middle ground pleased absolutely no one.

Summary: Macquarrie vs. Cupitt

• Macquarrie is forgotten because he was a moderate coordinator whose specific philosophical tools (existentialism) grew dusty in the attic of academia.
• Cupitt is forgotten because he was a radical iconoclast who blew up the foundations of his own house. Once the smoke cleared, there was no building left for subsequent generations to inhabit.

Religion, History and G. R Balleine – Part 1

Religion, History and G. R Balleine – Part 1
(The Reformation in Jersey)
By Jason St John Nicolle

From "The Pilot", 1991

WHETHER we realise it or not, we all tend to look at the past through the eyes of particular historians.

When we look at Jesus, we see Him as a handful of contemporary Jews saw Him: we share in their profound insights and personal knowledge, but also in their preconceptions, their misapprehensions — and, because they, like us, are merely human, in their ignorance too. All is hardly surprising: we are busy people, and few of us have the desire, the opportunity, or even the ability, to want to think everything out for ourselves.

But it does us good to be reminded that often we see things as they have seemed to some particularly influential writer, and not as they really were. Our romantic vision of the Middle Ages, with its castles and chivalry, is largely a product of two late mediaeval writers, Thomas Malory and Jean Froissart, although it was popularised through the works of Sir Walter Scott. If we go back earlier, and try to picture England in the seventh century, we find ourselves peopling it with saints and kings whom a Northumbrian scholar called Bede saw fit to include in his early eighth century "Ecclesiastical History of the English People," So it should not come as a surprise to learn that when we turn to the history of our own Island, and examine its religious history in the sixteenth century, a period which saw fundamental changes in the beliefs and organisation of the Christian churches throughout Europe, changes packed together for convenience and carried about in a suitcase called the Reformation, we again tend to look at the past through somebody else's eyes.

The name of George Reginald Balleine, probably the most and perhaps the most important, of the twentieth century historians of Jersey, will be familiar to anyone with an interest in Island history. The son of Oxford don who was to become Dean of Jersey, he read history at his father's university and decided to follow him into the church: he was ordained priest in 1897 and served in two London parishes before being appointed to the Vicarage of St James, Bermondsey, in 1908. He was to retain the living for the next thirty years, until he left the mainland for the Island which was to be his home for the remaining years of his life. It was then that he began the detailed and conscientious research which was to result in three of the most familiar works on Island history: the "Biographical Dictionary of Jersey"; the historical gazetteer, "The Bailiwick of Jersey"; and, above all, the "History of the Island of Jersey."

Balleine possessed many of the qualities of a great historian: thoroughly acquainted with the sources, and perceptive in his judgments, he combined the broad vision of the story teller with the scholar's eye for detail. But all historians have their limitations. Balleine was more than a detached and impartial historian: he was also a convinced and enthusiastic Evangelical Christian; and if the two came into conflict, he would doubtless have been relieved to have found the duties of religion overriding those of disinterested scholarship.

Balleine's churchmanship is illustrated by the subject he chose for his first significant historical work, "A History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England," published in the year he was appointed to Bermondsey and still a standard text more than eighty years later. In the author's own words, it was "the work of one . . . entirely in sympathy with his subject," written in the hope that it might "stir some readers to greater earnestness in the service of God." In Balleine's eyes, the Evangelical faith was self-evidently the only true Christian faith: grounded in the Bible and tested by reference to the New Testament, it was the Religion of Redemption, in which nothing could be allowed to interfere with the believer's direct and personal relationship with Christ. Its superiority over other forms of Christian faith was so self-evident that its triumph was inevitable; so self-evident in fact, that all the historian had to do was to chart its successful progress.

Balleine knew that this faith was not some novelty of the twentieth century. It had been taught by Luther and Calvin, the scriptwriters of the Reformation; it was the faith which had begun to spread through France and Germany in the 1520's, and through England in the 1530's. And, Balleine tells us, it was the faith which, by the 1550's, had seized the hearts and minds of the men and women of Jersey. But are we seeing the events of the sixteenth century as they really happened, or merely as George Reginald Balleine would have liked to have seen them?

To answer this question, we need to look at the religious history of sixteenth century Jersey in more detail; but this will have to wait until the next article.

In memory of joy lost

Another sad poem. It seems to be a constant theme at the moment.

In memory of joy lost

Time to come back, time to return
So often, so very often I yearn
For those past evenings, full of peace
But change came, and they did cease
Reaching outwards in song and prayer
Love at the centre, we held so dear
Dew in the evening, in darker skies
A community of hope, bound in ties
Of hearth and home, of candlelight
Mary on the wall blessed this sight
Frescos from ancient time, past days
And yet we still follow in their ways
Until suddenly it stopped, was ended
A fracture that could not be mended
And inward turning, to feeling self
Evening prayers placed on the shelf
Enlightenment and a journey taken
Which I still feel was so mistaken
We made choice, and paid the cost
Change leaves a memory of joy lost

Surville Manor: 1967 Report – Part 1

Surville Manor: 1967 Report – Part 1

SURVILLE MANOR
GARDES LA FOY
By PHYLLIDA CAMPBELL
Jersey Life, 1967

PEACEFUL AND REMOTE, approached only by traversing narrow twisting lanes, Surville Manor in the parish of St. Helier and St. Lawrence, is surrounded on all sides by pastoral scenes, and had it been built a trifle further north would have been sited in the dead centre of the Island.

It is certain that Surville Manor is ancient, perhaps one of the oldest manors in Jersey. The Fief de Surville belongs to Mr. Hedley John Messervy, solicitor of Hill Street and the Manor and grounds are owned today by Commander and Mrs. T. Chamberlayne, who make their home in the new 'cod-house' built in 1841 in front of the ancient dwelling, now restored and let to a farmer and his family.

Many people are a little vague as to what a Fief in Jersey really means. The system is of course a survival of feudal days, in fact from the time a Duke of Normandy named William Longsword captured these Islands in A.D. 933, dividing his new possession into fiefs, keeping some for himself and giving others to his followers. There were the great ones, St. Ouen, Rozel, Trinity, Samares and Melesches whose seigneurs owed knight service, and a hundred or so smaller fiefs divided into various sizes. All, whether big or small, carried with them certain privileges and certain obligations, particularly in time of war.

`Ten sixty-six and all that' could have meant little to the Channel Islands, still a part of the old Duchy of Normandy. It was when King John lost his Norman possessions in 1204 and the Channel Islands, given complete autonomy of Government, stayed with the British Crown, that some of the Norman-Jersey fief owners began to wonder where their loyalties lay. In many cases they also held rich lands in Normandy and after all, were of French descent. Those who departed had their fiefs confiscated by the Crown, some to be re-bestowed later, some to remain today as 'fiefs de la Reine'. Nine in all, of which Surville was one, remained loyal to King John and retained their fiefs on the original terms of grant. The 'disloyal fiefs' were subject to new rights on re-bestowal and remain as it were, junior. Naturally, for one reason and another, the changes of ownership of most of the fiefs over the centuries have been innumerable.

An Ancient Fief

The mists of antiquity tend to shroud the origins of Surville Manor, but it is known that the fief, which forms the northern boundary of the Fief de Bellozanne, was held by Guillame de Sureville in the twelfth century. A Mathilda de Sureville was mentioned as owing 40 shillings for 'fine and relief' in 1180 and then there were the brothers Robert and Nichola de Surville who owned the water mill, Moulin de la Haye at St. Lawrence at about that time. The name of Nicholas, heir of Thomas de Surville, crops up in old documents for having extorted relief illegally, a bad habit of mediaeval seigneurs. There is mention of Maitre Nicholas de Surville, a clerk, in the thirteenth century, also of his son, and then the name seems to have died out. In 1399 the fief passed to the family of le Gallais who lived in the charming little manor for 15 generations.

The Le Gallais family migrated to Jersey from Brittany long before the time of the Norman Conquest, and a Matthew Le Gales was the first Seigneur of Surville of that name. After their long sojourn, little that is positive is known about the occupants, but there is an interesting pointer in the fact that the Coat of Arms of the famous family of Pawlett of Poulet who governed Jersey for three generations in Queen Elizabeth the First's reign, are displayed on the facade of the new manor.

There over the front door of this early Victorian mansion are the arms 'sable three swords in pile silver, points meeting in base, hilts and pommels gold' and the crest `Gardes La Foy', an identical replica of which can be seen by any visitor to Mont Orgueil Castle at Gorey, the official Governors' residence of those days. Unless there was some monkey business, these arms must surely have been removed from the decaying old Surville Manor and placed on the new house which is so unfortunately built directly in front of it as happened so often in those days.

Queen Mary's Gaoler

During the rule of the Pawletts from 1550 to 1600, members of this family inter-married with any number of prominent Jersey families, and a descendant must have found himself in possession of Surville Manor, possibly through marriage. This was a fine old Somerset family, and the first to come here, Sir Hugh, was appointed by the Queen to the governorship of Jersey in 1550. He, his son and later his grandson, had endless struggles with the Queen to be granted more money for repairs to the fortifications of Mont Orgueil Castle, and spent hundreds of pounds from their own pockets when she held out on them, preoccupied as she was with building the new castle to be named after her in St. Aubin's Bay.

Sir Hugh's son, Sir Amyas, was once called from his duties in Jersey to act as gaoler-in-chief to Mary, Queen of Scots.

A suggestion was made to him, presumably from Royal channels, that he might quietly liquidate the lady, but he replied that 'never would he make such a foul shipwreck of conscience'. Eventually with gentle gallantry he escorted the ill-fated Queen to the scaffold. She turned to him and her last words were 'Thanks, Sir Amyas, this will be the last trouble I will give you'.