Jersey Our Island: Sentiment and Smells – Part 1

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.

Jersey Our Island: Sentiment and Smells – Part 1
By Sidney Bisson

THE tomatoes were already beginning to ripen when I kept my promise to myself to come back and look at the interior of St. Mary's Church. How they have managed to ripen at all this summer is a mystery. By all the rules of the game the unusual amount of rain should have given them all `the disease.'

For in spite of frequent spraying Phytophthora infestans usually wins if the summer is very wet. But a wet summer in Jersey is usually warm as well. This summer has been wet and cool, and the cool weather, a farmer confided to me, had been a blessing in disguise. If it had been wet and warm nothing could have saved the crop. As it is, some growers have had to spray as often as three times a week during the wettest period. Even so, whilst watching the pickers I noticed that a goodly number of fruits were rejected and thrown on the ground between the rows.

Phytophthora infestans had taken his tithe.

I might have spared myself the trouble of returning to St. Mary's. The inside of the church is plain and unremarkable. Perhaps if I had been able to appreciate it properly I should have termed it simple and dignified. But repairs of some kind were in progress. Masons were hammering vigorously at the stone walls, and the vaulted roof re-echoed the sound of their blows. It was not the best kind of atmosphere for appreciating the dignity of a church. I walked out disappointed.

A little way past the church a road branches off down a pleasant valley to the little bay of Greve de Lecq. It is odd how fashions in bays change as in everything else. When I was a boy, Gorey and Corbière were the favourite resorts, both for residents and visitors. There was a good reason for their popularity.

Both were linked to St. Helier by miniature railways. With the expansion of bus services, the railways were put out of action and visitors sought fresh fields. St. Ouen's Bay, Greve de Lecq, and Rozel came into the picture. Today the fashion is for St. Brelade.

Greve de Lecq is one of the few places that the German occupation has improved. At the height of its popularity its beauty was spoilt by the wooden shacks and stalls of numerous dispensers of tea and ices, which sprawled over the foot of the valley. The Germans swept these away, and their gun emplacement, in spite of its grim memories, seems to fit in better with the natural surroundings.

One feature that has disappeared appealed particularly to the older generation of tourists: the camera obscura. Working on the principle of a submarine's periscope, it projected onto a white enamel table views of the surrounding coast and countryside. When I visited it many years ago, the old man who worked it claimed that it had given him a wider insight into human nature than he could have obtained by reading any number of books. In the quiet evenings when the bay was deserted and lovers repaired to the bracken-covered slopes, he would focus his machine on them and study the technique of love-making!

Greve de Lecq has been aptly described as `not a bay, but a cove.' To anyone who has read accounts of the voyages of ancient navigators the word conjures up visions of just such a spot as this, with its tiny beach, hemmed in by rocky slopes and backed by a green valley.

In 1872 someone had the bright idea of turning the cove into a harbour. The first pier proved too small for practical purposes, and various extensions were planned and started. It is difficult to understand the need for anything more than a small fishermen's harbour at this spot, but at that time Jersey had a merchant fleet of over three hundred sailing ships, and it may have been intended to relieve the congestion in St. Helier's harbour which was also being enlarged.

Although for a few years excursions to Sark were run from the new harbour, it eventually turned out to be a white elephant, like several other marine works in the island. Heavy seas in the winter of 1884 washed away part of the extensions and the project was abandoned.

A footpath from Greve de Lecq Valley leads to Crabbe, where there is a rifle range, originally built for the Jersey Militia and still used by local rifle clubs. Rifle shooting is popular in the island, and a team goes to Bisley annually to compete in the Kolapore competition.

The idea of an island of 50,000 inhabitants competing against the Mother Country and the great Dominions is not as ridiculous as it sounds. Jersey has several times reached third place in the competition, and was once on the verge of placing second when an excited marksman fired at the wrong target. This year the island provided the youngest competitor ever to reach the final stage of the King's Prize, and with one or two other promising youngsters coining along, local marksmen are hopeful that one day they may return with the coveted trophy.

It is not everybody who would choose to build a house on top of a tomb, even a prehistoric one. But that is what someone has done at La Hougue Mauger, on a height overlooking Crabbe. The Bronze Age barrow has been flattened, and a little granite house with cheerful red roof and blue painted woodwork now stands on its site. It is true that no human remains were found when the barrow was excavated, but the presence of the usual grave furnishings of the time leave little doubt as to its original purpose, and there was evidence that the tomb had previously been rifled.

Builders of the eighteenth century were in the habit of taking stones from these prehistoric monuments to save themselves the trouble of quarrying, and many have vanished or are incomplete. Whether or not the present occupier is troubled by Bronze Age spooks, he certainly has the advantage of a marvellous view.

Standing on the highest point in the vicinity, the house looks out over the sea to the grey shadowy shapes of Guernsey and Sark on the north-west horizon and the sandy coasts of Normandy on the north-east. On a very clear day it may be possible to see as far as Alderney. In the foreground the eye can roam over a broad stretch of the wild north coast of the island.

As I stood in a gap in the hedge looking out over the sea, two beings came and took stock of me. The first, a human, I took to be the owner of the field in which I stood, so disapprovingly did he stare.

Before I could enquire whether he objected to my mild trespass, he sped away on a bicycle, leaving me at the mercy of the other. It was a lizard a form of reptile so rare in Jersey that a law has been passed forbidding their exportation. Why anyone should want to export lizards passes my comprehension.

That is another thing I must try and remember to ask Godfrey. It is said that if you catch a lizard by its tail it darts off, leaving its tail behind like the sheep of little Bo-Peep. I did not have a chance of finding out if this was true. I tried to edge forward to get a better view of the creature and it disappeared completely.

As neither patient waiting nor prodding the hedge with a stick caused it to reappear, I pushed on towards La Falaise, an old farmhouse that is claimed (on rather slender evidence) to have been a mediaeval priory.

The main building dates back to 1708 according to the date carved on the lintel. Behind it is the structure that is supposed to have been part of the priory. Whatever its original use, it is certainly a curious piece of architecture. Its weathered granite wall is pierced at one end by a Norman gateway, at the other by a rectangular opening surmounted by a lintel with wedge-shaped ends.

Immediately above the lintel is a square opening reaching to the roof. Besides this, there are two other `window' openings in the wall one a mere square peep-hole, the other more like a normal window, but very low in comparison to its breadth.

In the courtyard formed by the angle of these two buildings is an old well of the typical Jersey type.

A few yards away stands another old house which is also associated with the `priory.' There are still a number of houses in the island with stone staircases, but this is one of the few I have come across in which the staircase is built in a semi-circular `turret' projecting from the back of the house. It is lighted by a series of tiny square windows.

As if to counterbalance the religious atmosphere of the `priory,' a steep path from here leads (downwards, appropriately!) to the Devil's Hole. The devil used to welcome visitors to his cavern in effigy (and still does, for all I know; for I must confess that I was not feeling energetic enough to scramble three hundred feet down and back again on a summer's afternoon). I can recall that he looked very fearsome to me at the tender age of seven, with his red tongue that waggled when you pulled a string.

Of course the point of the exercise is not to see the devil but the Hole. Memory portrays it (and so do picture postcards) as a natural tunnel worn through the rock by the sea, which roars through it with the noise of an express train. To make matters more terrifying, the shoreward end of the tunnel is at the bottom of an almost perpendicular ravine.