Teilhard de Chardin was here!

Teilhard de Chardin was here!
By Pierre Landick

The Islander 1980

Long ago. before Senator Clarence Dupre had warned about too many hotel beds and Colin Powell had advised against excessive tariff increases. the Jersey Imperial Hotel was conceived. It was to be a disaster.

In a flash style. now well known to Jersey cynics. the Jersey Imperial Hotel Company bought a property called “La Fregonniere" in St. Saviour's Road. Work started in 1863. Within months it had ceased because of a financial crisis in England.

In October 1864 work resumed and the Jersey Imperial opened on the 1st September 1866 — the “splendour and extravagance of the finished hotel was unimaginable”? A beautiful asset for any receiver.

The Island's military and civil heads attended the inaugural grand banquet and impressive toasts were drunk to Queen Victoria. the Emperor and Empress of France and the success of the hotel. Queen Victoria reigned long. but France now has a president and the hotel went down the drain.

Unfortunately. the current demand for 5 sun hotels. especially on such a scale. was low. One of the seven directors. Jurat Joshua Le Bailly was jailed in 1873 for fraud.

By 1880 the sybaritic-minded management had handed over to the austere French Jesuits. The Jesuits substituted wall to wall carpeting for wall to wall floorboards and from then till 1940 processed 3.000 trainees using the premises as a seminary; many went as missionaries to Africa and China and 12 became bishops. Teilhard de Chardin studied there. The library at its peak contained 200,000 books. The Jesuits couldn't buy property. being foreigners in Jersey, so leased the premises from English Jesuits who bought it for them.

During the German occupation the Jesuits withdrew to France and after a Gestapo search. the premises became. first. troop accommodation, then an N.C.O. training school.

After the war. the Jesuits decided to leave the island altogether so the folly stood vacant until 1953.

At this time it was known as Maison St. Louis and the observatory built in 1844 and now run by Pére Rey was part of the property and still bears the name. 

What could be done with this five storey building with rudimentary plumbing and bare floors? The carpets had been sold off but why no plumbing in a plush hotel. you may ask? Technically it was feasible to install baths in every room in the 1860’s and indeed it had been proposed to provide them at the Savoy being built in London at about the same date. But. as Robert D'Oyly Carte was asked: were the guests to be seals or people? Washing was not even recognised as safe. never mind essential. The present management have greatly repressed this policy.

Eventually. on the 15th May 1954, the building once more took in paying guests as the Hotel de France. From 130 bedrooms then. the capacity has expanded over the last quarter century

to 312 now. catering for over 600 guests. thereby making it the second biggest hotel in Jersey. An army of 150 staff. predominantly Portuguese, keep the hotel open all year.

Conferences. annual dinners, champagne receptions and many other functions and excuses for celebration now turn automatically to the de France. 

To absorb extra demands and the need for additional entertainment for the hotel guests and non-residents. the Lido de France opened just down the slope in front seven years ago. This complex. run by a sister company as a separate concern. stands in the middle of the old rose gardens which were said to be magnificent.

The area could have been easily landscaped with a decorative pool and possibly swans and water lilies, but those luxurious days have gone, although the hotel today is still at the top end of the tourism categories, being first register, 3 suns.

Although the Hotel de France is today well known as a high-class Jersey hotel which caters for numerous functions, it is less well appreciated that the building, although originally designed for tourism, has housed a few very rich tourists. many poorer French Jesuits, German troops and officers and nobody as well during its 114 year life.