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Trinity, Jersey

December 1629

At four o’clock, the light failed. A winter storm pummelled into Jersey, crashing into the northern cliffs like a fighter’s fist. The lightning passed in moments; the spire of Trinity Church stood as bright as mid-day, and a black storm-cloud twisted over the village like a dragon. It breathed out a flight of hailstones, which began to drum down on the huddled houses below.

Raulin, a seventeen-year-old farmer’s son, stepped straight out into the storm, herding his terrified cows into their flimsy barn, soothing their agitated cries with fresh hay. By the time he was done, the full frenzy of the storm had passed. Drenched but relieved, Raulin watched as the lightning raced helter-skelter towards the southern horizon. The worst had passed, and a silky dusk settled upon the rain-drenched parish.

Yet the young farmer was suddenly troubled, as he counted the necks of his small herd of cattle. His favourite milk-cow was missing.

He remembered the parable of the lost sheep he had often heard at Trinity church; how a farmer should go to the ends of the earth to save one of his own. This wasn’t a matter of devotion in his case, but simple financial necessity. A lost milk-cow would mean a lean summer. Sighing, he set off into the night, crossing the black fields of his father’s farm in search of the missing cow. Where might she have wandered?

His search began. The farmland soon came to an end, and the wooded bay of Bouley lay beyond. It lacked even a stone pier, but was a safe anchorage for fishermen, a haven amidst the cliffs of the rugged north. However, Raulin always disliked the coast; for one thing, he could not swim. An air of menace always seemed to hang over these parts like evening fog; there were swirling rumours of misbegotten happenings, of secrets best untold.

Every little child whimpered at the tale of the Tchan du Boulé, the giant Black Dog of Bouley Bay that their grandmothers said stalked the beach. This was said to be the Storm Hound, the half-brother of Cerberus, plucked fresh from the gates of hell. They said he dragged before him a great iron chain that no mortal could grasp. His eyes were said to be blinding yellow saucers, and the mere sight of them turned strong legs to butter.

Raulin scoffed at the fable, surely told to frighten errant children and scarcely credible even after a few jars of cider. After all, he knew these cliffs like the veins on his hand, or the dolmens that marked his father’s farmland. So, he strode boldly on into the watches of the night.

Eventually, he heard it! The gentle lowing of his frightened cow, which must have fled here, disorientated, lost in the storm. Raulin advanced to the edge of the land. This was one of the highest vantage points in Jersey; the dark mass of the sea-cliffs loomed to left and right, and the long arm of France snaked across the horizon. Above him, the gibbous moon hung like a lantern, and the sky scudded with night clouds.

Raulin was nearing his missing cow. Taking the secret paths to the shoreline, descending rapidly as the cliffs fell away into the sea, he made swift progress. The cries grew nearer; and there he saw her, frozen on a ledge overlooking the moonlit bay. She was clearly too terrified to take another step, for fear of plummeting to the beach a hundred feet below. Raulin coaxed her forward, and her soft warm muzzle reached gratefully into his hand. It was midnight, but he had found his prize.

A cloud snuffed out the moon, and at once his joy froze to fear, as if the tide had suddenly drained from Bouley Bay. He had heard the blunt, remorseless clanking of an iron chain. Far too loud to be an illusion; this was the unmistakable ring of steel striking rock on the beach below. Now it was advancing towards his shelter in the wooded glade. Terrifying flashes of yellow glinted before him in the trees. They seemed like the baleful saucer eyes of something unearthly, bent on his blood.

Raulin reeled as if drunk, poleaxed by the mounting terror in his own mind. The fiery eyes approached. At last, the deep-chested baying of a great dog filled the forest, the furious roar of a hound that was poised to strike. Raulin slumped to his knees in the dead of the Trinity night, his face on the ground, weeping with fear. The saucer-eyes were directly above him now. Raulin whimpered once more, then fell into a dark and dreamless sleep.

The smugglers smiled at the farm-boy who had fainted at their feet. They had had almost completed hauling the barrels along their iron chain up the steep cliff. Jersey’s cellars would be stuffed full of the finest brandy that night, and their own purses would bulge with silver coin.

The smugglers snuffed out their yellow circular lanterns that served as eyes and led their pet hound back to their ship. Along the way home they stumbled across a little lost cow, and they decided to kill it, to keep the legend of the Black Dog alive. Then their boat glided away into the night, as if they had never been. Bouley Bay settled back into the sad sleep of winter.

Young Raulin was found near the shoreline the next morning, shivering and delirious, ranting incoherently. They warmed him by the fireside, and he would be well enough in time. Yet thereafter he would become a brooding, silent man, with a terrible fear of the cliffs and a superstitious belief in the Black Dog of Bouley Bay.

To be fair, the facts of the incident spoke for themselves. The Constable of Trinity addressed the parish the next day, detailing the tell-tale evidence, the chain-link imprinted in the soft mud of the road, the fatal hallmark of the storm hound. Young Raulin was truly lucky to survive, he observed. After all, he was found near the body of his own dead cow, a poor victim of the savage beast.

In the light of these disturbing events, it was only fit and proper that a strict curfew should be observed, and all parishioners should avoid the coast at night. The Constable solemnly prayed for the safety of his parish, beseeching them to be protected until the shadow of the Dog had passed.

Then he retreated homeward, to open one of the barrels that had mysteriously arrived at his porch that morning. The Constable prised open the stopper, turned the tap, and poured himself a glass of fresh French brandy.

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#Ad This story is taken from my third book Illustrated Tales of Jersey, published by Amberley. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Link is here. It’s also on sale at Waterstones and The Harbour Gallery in St Helier.

Thank you for reading!

All words and images © Paul Darroch 2026

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Music: Chariots by Gavin Luke, courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

I will confess this much: I am a trickster, a pilferer, and a thief. I was christened Jean of St Ouen, but I shed that skin on the day I first slipped away from the Seigneur’s justice. That callow youth never returned. In these latter days, I travel under a dozen names, cloaked with a brace of disguises, bound together by a single, burning obsession; for gold.

The moon hung like a gibbet over the western bay on the night I set out to rob the manor of La Brecquette. I was clad in black to hide my face and caked in earth to mask my scent. I darted like a lizard over rocks, skirted the snares of St Ouen’s Pond, and followed the stream into the deep valley of l’Etacq. No sound, no voices, no watchmen. The underbelly of my prey lay before me.

The manor house of La Brecquette is old, very old. Some say it is a Roman foreshore fortress, built in the dying days of the Empire. Drunken tongues claim it is practically built on Caesar’s buried gold. Yet by my reckoning it looks the same as a dozen other grand Jersey homes; a carcass of heavy red granite, a dower wing and an obligatory tourelle peering balefully over the sandbar towards the western ocean. Fortress or not, I’m going to break in.

The house is surrounded by the finest cider orchards in Jersey. They say the oldest oaks grew on this headland before Helier ever set foot on this blasted rock. Some even say the trees are the last living remnants of an ancient forest, lost to time and memory, dating from the days when the bishop of Coutances could walk over to Jersey on a plank. But I care little for fireside legends. I am here for the coin.

Naturally, if my trespass here were discovered, I would die. I fancy I would be thrown straight off the cliff at Geoffrey’s Leap, like felons in days gone by. More likely, I would be hung in the yard of the brutish castle at Mont Orgueil. But the rewards are rich, and the timing is ideal. The Island is distracted, ablaze with joy at the news of the Duke’s terrific victory at Poitiers. A week of feasting and revelry has been ordained. The wine is flowing, and the people are asleep.

Such quick work for me to prise a door open, as softly as a feather. The poor guardsmen – farmer lads with pikes – snore like gluttons. I brashly stroll through the dying embers of a lavish feast, through the banqueting chamber. The master of the house, John Wallis, is slumped in his chair, his belly bloated with a surfeit of wine. His hounds are snorting at his feet, chasing rabbits in their dreams. A cloud of maggots in the scullery devours the entrails of a cow, all that is left of the thick side of gorgeous beef that the master and his guests have enjoyed.

I glide up the spiral stairs like a ghost, and I turn into the strong room. Yet as I pass the leaden glass window, I stop dead in my tracks. I hear the rushing sound of a mighty river. But there are no great rivers in Jersey. What is happening? I gasp with sheer amazement; nose pressed against the pane like a child. The sea just beyond the manor is suddenly draining away, beating a sullen, rushing retreat, as if the waters are swirling out of a tub.

They reveal an astonishing world. In the moonlight, I see the broken stumps of a forest, clustered on ledges of rock beyond the sandbar, shelving away from me like terraced steps. So, the old legends were true; there had once been a great wood here, before the age of Noah. His drowned kingdom, of rock palaces and chiselled sea valleys, now stretches away hundreds of yards towards the western horizon.

Fish are floundering on silvery rocks now, choking in the fatal air. Eels thrash themselves to death in this strange new world. The black bones of an ancient shipwreck lie exposed on one silted outcrop. Words from my childhood churchgoing days leap unbidden into my mind. “The first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea”.

The red moon glowers in the sky above, as heavy as a stone quern. I glance to the east, where the strong spire of St Ouen’s Parish Church still looms against the heights. Yet there is no thunderclap of judgment, no angel-scroll announcing the end of the world. I cross myself three times, out of instinct. Then I resume my brazen thievery.

My handiwork, as deft as quicksilver, prises open the manorial chest. I scoop my fingers in, and behind a thick ream of title deeds, I finally claim my prize. Silken purses bulging with gold coins, a smattering of rings and jewellery, a fine stash of loot for an evening’s work. I fleece the old fool’s storehouse in a moment.

Then my head explodes. A brace of seagulls is sweeping in over the tourelle, the tower, all of them shrieking in fury. At once the land birds awake in a flurry, whooping together in a cacophony of terror. In the hall below, the wolf hounds start to howl, as if struck by forked lightning. I freeze. My hand clasps on the hilt of my dagger, my teeth clenched, my heart bursting, ready to fight for my life. Yet the guard-dogs are as giddy as kittens. They thrash straight out of the gates and vanish away into the night, heading up for the higher ground.

A slurred voice yells an oath from the banqueting hall. The master of the house has awoken; the game is up. I sped off into the night, hurtling through the trees as if the hangman himself was at my heels. I ran with every sinew in my body, and I kept on running.

Before long I was panting my innards out, scratched by thorn bushes, my ankle raw and twisted. At last, halfway up the slope of the great hilltop above l’Etacq, I dared to look back.

That was when I saw the great black line on the horizon, unfurling like a scroll, erasing all the stars. A towering ocean wave, the king of tides, was sweeping in at speed towards Jersey. The dreadful wall of black water was five times the height of the tallest man. For an instant, it hung poised, hanging like a curtain over the doomed manor of La Brecquette. Then it fell like an executioner’s blade.

A scurry of lanterns; a frantic welter of men saddling up horses, of servants darting like insects in the courtyard. And then that world suddenly drowned, as violently as a burning brazier ducked into a pond. The water smashed over the tourelle and all the candles turned to black. The diabolical wave was not done yet. It ripped on through the rich orchards and surged all the way up the valley of l’Etacq, finally breaking at the foot of the very mount where I cowered. A jagged sea-crest leapt into the sky, salt-spraying my feet, then mercifully folded back onto itself.

I fell to my knees and begged for my life: “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum…” Yet just as suddenly as the sea had lurched onto the land, the monstrous tide retreated. It swiftly fell back to its divinely appointed boundaries. Yet the world had changed.

My jaw dropped in awe. The fearsome wave had destroyed the sandbar and punched a new, clean hole in the coast. The map of Jersey had changed in an instant, as if a child had drawn a clean smooth line, an arc right down to Corbière.

And at the low tide next morning, every man could see that the trees and soil of La Brecquette had been stripped away like skin. Only a skeleton of stone remained. Crowds of locals were thronging there, jabbering and pointing, sending salvage boats to bring the debris back home. Already fishermen were scouring for wreckage, looting the bricks, swarming over the ruined manor like flies on a corpse.

Only this thief had been spared. I wept and prayed for hours. As night fell, I buried my cache of stolen gold, deep beneath the dunes, overlooking the drowned manor. I kept just a single copper coin. I punched a hole in it and will wear it around my neck until the day I die. This will be my albatross, my penance.

And now, of course, it is as if La Brecquette had never been. The years have fallen away like the tide, and I am an old man. The endless wars in France still rage of course, like old sores. But the legend of the manor under the sea is a mere fairy tale, a tall story to scare the children on All Hallows’ Eve. I still forage for seaweed or vraic on the new foreshore and tell my tale in the Island’s taverns for a copper coin. The drinkers laugh and sometimes humour this old fool. At night, I curl and sleep in my rags by the fire-grate, and in my dreams the sky becomes a black wave, and every night those waters are sweeping closer, dragging me home.

I will never speak of the gold, buried long ago like the fruit of those drowned orchards. The treasure still lies deep beneath the earth, waiting to be remembered, waiting to be found.

#Ad This story is included in my second book, Jersey: Secrets of the Sea. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made using the link below at no extra cost to you.

Jersey: Secrets of the Sea

#Ad You can discover more Jersey myths and legends in my latest book, Illustrated Tales of Jersey. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made using the link below at no extra cost to you.

Illustrated Tales of Jersey

© Paul Darroch 2026.

Music: Chariots by Gavin Luke courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

In the summer of 1912 an unknown Charlie Chaplin stepped onto the stage of the Jersey Opera House. This is his story.

Welcome to episode 33 of the History Islands podcast.

Jersey Opera House, August 1912

The Mumming Birds

The music hall was my mother’s meat and my father’s drink. They say parents live on through their children, and today the show must go on. As a boy I stalked like a ghost along the streets of London, squinting in through the blackened and frosted windows. A grinding, maddening hunger consumed me, for I had scarcely eaten in days. I sidled past the soft and gentle lights of restaurants, where happy families smiled and feasted. I gawped at the soft velvet clothes of respectable men, dazzled by the flash of their gold sovereigns, as if they were elegant creatures from another world. I feel that I have always spent my life on the outside, slowly freezing in the icy midwinter, peering in through a wall of glass.

I remember the father who betrayed us all; his mind blinded by the bottle, a man who burned his liver out along with his music hall career before he was thirty. Charles Chaplin Senior walked out on his children and soon drank himself into a pauper’s grave, following the well-worn path from the vanity fair of the Kennington stage to the dull oblivion of the Horns Tavern. My beautiful, devoted mother once sang like an angel, but her beauty and spirit would not save her. One day Fate stole her pretty voice, and she would never sing again. She was a caged bird, struck dumb, her wings broken. She was jeered off-stage. So we soon sank down from our threadbare respectability and plummeted down the slope into the abyss. The maelstrom inevitably dragged us under, a downward spiral of debts and bailiffs and despair. A bitter, gnawing hunger riled me day and night. I had never realised just how low men and women can fall.

Life proved to be a cruel taskmaster. My father was dead. My poor mother was imprisoned in Cane Hill Lunatic Asylum, her mind broken. This pitiless world saw us as the scum of the earth, human refuse to be buried without trace. I was soon a pariah, a booby-hatch boy, my head shaved and doused in iodine for ringworm. I felt like a leper. I remember the utter desolation of the Hanwell workhouse, when we little infants sang ‘Abide with me’ as the black night fell down like a shroud over Victorian London. Sadness welled deep in our hearts, for we were utterly alone, and these were evil days. One day, I was hauled to the stage in front of an audience of hundreds, and sentenced like a criminal for the sins of another. I remember the vicious bite of the workhouse birch, and feeling absolutely nothing, for I was already numb on the inside. I was a hollow child, a ghost stalking an empty world.

In time I graduated from this pit of hell, and was released back onto the streets. In desperation, and fondly recalling my mother’s lost music hall career, I lodged my particulars with a theatre company on the Strand. I expected nothing and hoped for nothing. I took on hard labour to keep the hunger at bay. I merely willed to survive, to carry on with the show.

One day, I was chopping wood for money, hacking and burning away my own past, when the casting call came. My golden ticket away from destitution had finally come good. So I worked until I dropped, rehearsed my act to the point of exhaustion, and mastered my craft. Today I travel the length and breadth of the kingdom as a leading clown in Fred Karno’s celebrated company, draped in vaudeville stage glamour, bringing mirth to thousands in a travelling troupe. Our busy schedule this year has brought us to the Opera House on this lovely little isle of Jersey.

They say history repeats itself first as tragedy, and then as farce. So tonight I am playing my own father. I am playing the Inebriated Swell, a pie-eyed buffoon, slave to the bottle and a bundle of laughs. The play is an outrageous, uproarious send-off of the English music hall tradition, where my beloved mother once frolicked on the sad road to the asylum. Our show is called Mumming Birds, and the Jersey press is already declaring it a theatrical triumph.

As I shamble drunkenly into my stage box, even my eccentric gait draws titters and whoops of delight. So I prance and prattle for their pleasure, peeling my gloves off, tipping an attendant then trying in vain to remove my glove again from my bare skin. The Saucy Soubrette sings a ditty in my ear, like a mother soothing her child. I hurl down vegetables at the other actors, lampooning their artistic pretensions as they pretend to perform a show. Having dismally failed to light my cigar by electric light, I stretch dangerously out of my box to reach for a match, teetering in exaggerated fashion on the edge of the abyss.

Suddenly, I fall. This little manoeuvre takes practice, but after all, I have form. So I plunge down, exploding like a bomb onto the stage. The pantomime music hall show collapses in confusion and the audience roars its delight like the swell on the bay. I duly doff my hat and bow. Jersey Opera House shakes to its foundations with the rapturous thunder of applause.

Beyond the piercing glare of the footlights, I can glimpse them all: little children in hysterics, portly respectable ladies whooping uncontrollably, fine gentlemen choking on their chortles like a leg of mutton. The comfortable classes of Jersey have been mesmerised by this lost workhouse boy. I drink in the applause, as heart-warming as a shot of the local Calvados, as addictive as a dose of opium. Their faces bray and snort in delight, mirth rippling over their bewhiskered lips and their quivering double chins. A rogue thought leaps into my jester’s mind. I am a fool, for the sake of my show. Whose fool are you?

I sleep late the next day. Pretty little Jersey feels a world away from the dazzling metropolitan theatres, or the drinking pits of south London. The air here is salt-heavy and beguiling, reminding me of one lost boyhood day, before the fall, when we joyously dipped our toes in the sea at Southend-on-Sea. I never saw the sea again as a child. St Helier is even more delightful, though for all its French airs it is branded with the hallmarks of British provincialism. A grand statue of Queen Victoria dominates the Weighbridge, her heavy shadow still hanging like an implacable burden over our age. Little engines trundle out from the nearby railway station, creeping westwards along the arc of the bay. The wooden warehouses that line the Esplanade are packed high in season with potatoes for export for the finest markets in London.

Tomorrow is the climax of the Battle of Flowers, a charming parade that since the late King Edward’s coronation has formed the mainstay of the summer season here. The weather has been rather foul in these parts of late, but we can hardly miss the chance to take part in such a celebration. At a loose end that afternoon, my cast members and I join the parade on Victoria Avenue, marching in unison as a theatre troupe to amuse the crowds of assorted onlookers and good-timers.

They are still putting the finishing touches to the Battle displays, great floral barges, lavish flower-sacrifices to the gods of fate and summer and chance. I prance past the floats in character, drolly reprising my role as the tipsy music hall buffoon. The people love it. I break out from the line and perform an impromptu performance. Staggering past, clowning and japing it up to high heaven, I draw titters and cheers from the audience. I drink in the applause.

Out of the corner of my eye, a man is cranking up one of those curious new-fangled marvels, a cinematographic camera for taking motion pictures. I am told he has come down from London for the purpose, at the behest of the Topical Gazette, and is grinding the machine for all its worth. Almost as many people seem to be watching him as me. I love novelty, and this is my first time on film, but it seems to fit me like a glove. The crowds roar out their acclaim, and the sea air is fresh with the scent of opportunity.

My little solo escapade is coming to an end. I bow jauntily and revel in the cheers. Just as I saunter back into the mêlée, I spy a little boy, his face dirty and smudged, gazing at me with pure adoration. I look back at him and see myself. He is a grimy street urchin, dirty but clinging to his pride, entranced by the show. The boy calls out to a distant mother, “Oh mamma, why has he gone away? I did want to see the funny man again?” His laughter burns in my ears like a promise.

In that moment, I begin to understand. This is the shape of things to come. The cine-camera whirrs and turns, spinning out my future. Suddenly the sun breaks in through the cloudbank high over St Aubin’s Bay, and hangs above the horizon like a glorious sign. The 1912 Battle of Flowers glides on. The little lost boy turns and smiles at me for one last time, before he is swallowed up by the carnival. I slip back into the warm embrace of the parade, my ears ringing with his laughter, dancing on towards tomorrow.

The Battle of Flowers changed everything. Chaplin looked at once for a chance to break into the intoxicating and fledgling world of celluloid film. First, the vistas of an American vaudeville tour beckoned. Within eighteen months of wowing the crowd at the Jersey Opera House, the cloudburst of fame broke open. The West Coast producer Mack Sennett watched the acclaimed Mumming Birds show, smelt raw talent, and immediately signed Chaplin up to Keystone Pictures. Soon the horizons of California unfurled in an endless paradise of orange groves and ocean blue and shimmering sunshine.

One day, in a drab prop hut in a Hollywood field, Chaplin spontaneously grabbed an eclectic collection of props. The magic took mere seconds. Like a glorious butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, the Little Tramp was born. Soon his name was flashing in bold electric lights on Times Square: “Chaplin signs with Mutual at six hundred and seventy thousand a year”.

Suddenly the workhouse boy is a millionaire, as if the dregs of the earth are now hailed as its finest wine. Chaplin is proclaimed a genius, and his Hollywood confidante is Jersey’s very own scarlet novelist, Mrs Elinor Glyn, whose slushy romances lure millions to the box office. Chaplin’s future blazes as bright and dazzling as the burning white arcs of the studio Klieg lamps.

Half a world away from Hollywood Boulevard, the bedraggled and limpid cabbage trees sway like poor man’s palms over Jersey’s Victoria Avenue, lashed by the blustery squalls of the British summer. They can stand proud, for this is where the path to immortality first began.

This story is taken from Jersey: The Hidden Histories, which is available from Amazon UK as well as Waterstones, TG Jones and the Harbour Gallery in Jersey.

Music Chariots by Gavin Luke. Courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

The 1914 film still of Charlie Chaplin is in the public domain and is used here for historical and educational purposes in accordance with Fair Dealing (UK) and Fair Use (US) principles.

All text (c) Paul Darroch 2015, 2026

First of all, thank you to everyone who has chosen Illustrated Tales of Jersey as a Christmas gift. There are still a few signed copies left at the Harbour Gallery - alternatively, just reply to this email if you’d like to purchase one.

In the meantime, here is a new story, which doesn’t feature in the book. It tells one of Jersey’s most famous ghostly legends.

~ Paul Darroch

The Ghost Bride of the Watermills

October 1926

First Tower, Parish of St Helier.

After his fourth pint of cider, Clement turned from the fire. He relished the flush of October flame in the smoky grate; the bawdy jokes and tall tales, but it was time to leave. He would be hauling cargo with these men at first light. For a second he basked in the life and warmth of the pub, but then he bade farewell.

Marianne had cleared her half of stout in the ladies’ room, so he swept her up and they strolled arm-in-arm along the Inner Road. The sun was sinking earlier now, and these were fitful, broken times. Rumours stalked the Island - of strikes and turmoil, of a lingering bitterness and promises unkept.

In the aftermath of the Great War – in which Clement had been too young to serve - Jersey had grown fractured and angry. Too many sons and brothers had not come home, and those who did were not the same men.

They were a jilted generation now, shorn of all innocence. Clement felt an invisible line drawn between him and his older brother Raulin, who had returned from the trenches with a brass medal, a shattered arm, and no words to describe the horrors he had seen.

Clement’s own chivalrous duty that autumn night was to walk his beloved Marianne home. Her granite cottage lay mid-way up Chemin des Moulins. The ancient mills that gave this road its name were long gone. Since they dammed the old stream and peppered it with treatment ponds and reservoirs, they called it by a new name - Waterworks Valley.

The authorities had flooded the site of Le Moulin des Ecoliers, the Scholar’s Watermill, back in 1909, when Clement was a small boy. The medieval mill up there had turned water into coin for centuries, funding generations of scholars, propelling them into priestly service at the universities Oxford and Cambridge. Now it lay lost beneath the rippling surface of Dannemarche reservoir, as half-remembered as the war.

Darkness swept in from the east. This valley, sunk deep between Mont Félard and Mont Cochon, was a vale of shadow. There were no lamps on this road. Yet the harvest moon was strong and full tonight, a spotlight hanging in the sky, draping the trees in silver. Trees, shedding bronze, awaited the skeletal claws of winter.

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As they walked, Clement and Marianne spoke of the pleasing, fleeting trivia of life; of fashion and film stars and Jersey gossip. Her china-white hand nestled snugly in his, and she whispered a few endearing words in Jèrriais. Marianne giggled, and her laughter was lost amidst the stagnant autumn pools. Yet in the darkness, the cover of night, the lovers dared to kiss. Lingering and dallying in the shadows, savouring each moment together.

They heard the last steam train of the evening, necking its way in from Corbière, skirting bay. Rumour had it the railways were on their last legs, bankrupted by the petrol omnibuses that spluttered and stank their way into town.

The lovers had a favourite spot by the roadside to idle time away. Tendrils and trees around curled around them, like nerves and sinews. They were in a cocoon of sorts, nestling in a forest of the mind. They started to kiss more deeply. Then they were lost in each other, in a night-dream of trees and silver and the glaring, high moon. Until, in a moment, the dream shattered.

Breaking in - a peal of bells! Faint and muffled at first, as if rising from a place far away, somewhere beneath the reservoir. Giddy and lilting now and finally exploding in full and undeniable force. There must be a bellringer hurling himself from a clock tower – and at this ungodly hour! Wedding bells at midnight – utter madness!

They must be coming from St Lawrence’s Church, on the higher ground up there, in the heart of the village. Marianne and Clement exchanged an astonished glance, and a shiver of night chill touched them. And then the chime seemed to slow, and ended with a decisive, mournful clang, grating and disconsonant, as if the ropes had been broken.

“An intruder in the belfry, I’ll warrant”, Clement muttered. “The Centenier must have swiftly put paid to this little prank”. In the moonlight, he opened his pocket-watch and the dial glistened. Strange to say, it was dead on midnight.

La Rue des Chemins was a serpentine road, passing between sheer cliffs and dank, leaf-clogged ponds. It couldn’t have witnessed a wedding parade in years. Yet one was surely approaching. Round a sharp rock corner, came the unmistakeable, familiar clattering of hooves!

The witnesses crouched, thunderstruck. Peering through a web of leaves, they glimpsed an ethereal sight. Sweeping round the valley came a magnificent coach. Pulled by a team of eight ice-white horses, this was a landau from the old, pre-war world. Dark liveried footmen escorted the bridal parade on its solemn journey. Their eyes could make out a brilliant, white-clad bride, sat proudly in her moment of triumph and beauty.

Who was she? Could they catch a glimpse of the bride? They stared at her, hypnotised. They say people know when they’re being watched. And indeed, the bride noticed. She finally turned to smile back, throwing back her splendid veil with a backwards shake. Clement and Marianne caught her gaze, full-bore.

The bride’s face was a grinning skull. Ice white under the harvest moon. Hollow sockets, with a black void in place of eyes. Emptiness.

Marianne screamed and Clement swore. Their hearts burst and they ran faster than they had ever run before, up and away from the road. Scrambling up the slope, through branches and mud and thick cloying leaves, to Clement’s family cottage. They lurched through the rickety door and bolted it fast behind them, throwing themselves to the floor in terror, their pulses exploding.

“What gives, my young brother?”

It was Raulin. He was still up of course, staring at the fire in the grate. He said so little these days. It seemed as if he went through the motions of daily life like a walking corpse. The joyful lad who signed up for the promise of glory had gone. His mind remained wedged somewhere in the mud and blood of Guillemont, on the terror of the night patrol, under the sniper’s flare.

Still, tonight his old warmth seemed to return awhile. He stood and looked with bemusement at his little brother and his consort, as they stammered out their astonishing tale. The jumble of words and terror and sheer fright tumbled out before the hearth, and then silence reclaimed the room.

At last, Raulin spoke. He calmly emptied his pipe and began. “You must know the legend of Clarisse, my brother. I’ve seen death myself, and her tale rings true enough. This is her story.

Long ago, a wealthy miller’s daughter, Clarisse, was propositioned by Renaud, a stranger from Normandy. He seemed a beguiling young gentleman.

She was hooked like a fish, utterly besotted with him. When he proposed, she accepted with delight; for he was courteous, well-spoken and attentive. It was, he explained, purely through the fickleness of fate that he had become a wanderer and fallen on such hard times.

She begged her father every night for permission to wed, and eventually he yielded, and bestowed a lavish dowry, a heavy bag of silver livres tournois, the fruit of the mill. That night, Renaud asked for her body too, and in the shadow of the great waterwheel, they gave themselves to each other.

When the joyous wedding day arose, no expense was spared. Clarisse had ordered the most magnificent dress, the finest footmen and a full team of coachmen. They paraded through the whole parish, all the way up to the lychgate of St Lawrence Church.

They were all waiting for her there; the priest, her family, her friends from near and far. The great and the good of town and the country parish; the little bonny bridesmaids and the stern, elderly aunts.

All except for one man. Renaud never came. No apology and no message, but the dowry was gone. The conman had vanished like a thief in the night, no doubt to stalk his next victim. Deflowered and deceived, Clarisse was now cruelly shunned by the parish. Serpent tongues wagged, lewd jokes were exchanged, withering glances of judgement were thrown. Even her own father was unforgiving, livid at the loss of a year’s hard-earned profit.

Clarisse soon sickened and took to her bed. They say she died of a broken heart, by the wheel in her father’s stone watermill. Within a week, they would bury her at the very church where she was due to be wed. You can still see her gravestone. The inscription has faded to grey over the centuries, but the Rector will know the place”.

Raulin paused, and for a moment the fiery ghosts of the Somme flashed through his mind. This is what it means when the darkness falls, and the world means nothing at all. Then, he emptied his pipe and finished the tale.

“That wasn’t quite the end of the story, though. Once a year, they say, she passes through this mortal realm again. The mill is underwater now, of course, but still, she finds a way. Then her wedding procession begins anew, snaking through this valley of shadow.

That was the woman you saw - Clarisse, the daughter of a miller, the skeleton bride. She is forever searching for her lost love, lamenting the warmth she once knew, seeking a glimpse of the world she left behind”.

© Paul Darroch 2025

It’s been great to appear on BBC Radio Jersey and to speak at the Jersey Festival of Words and U3A. If you missed these talks, then next week I will be reading some Jersey legends at the United Club in St Helier on Wednesday. If you’d like to come along please RSVP Alta Grundlingh at office@unitedclubjersey.com

I’ve never visited the Club before - so rather looking forward to it. I will bring a few books along too for signing!

United Club Jersey - Wednesday, 8 October 2025 - Paul Darroch Book Talk

Join us for an informative talk on Paul Darroch’s new book: Illustrated Tales of Jersey by the writer himself on Wednesday, 8 October 2025, at 6:15pm.

Free of charge | Cash bar | Nibbles available.

Jersey’s landscape and history are steeped in its folklore and legends. In Illustrated Tales of Jersey, local author Paul Darroch explores a multitude of mysterious myths and strange tales from centuries past. The book reveals the legends surrounding a dragon that ruled Jersey, a long-lost bridge linking the Island with Normandy, the giant storm hound that preyed on Bouley Bay, the martyrdom of Jersey’s patron Saint Helier, the manor under the sea, Jersey’s very own Atlantis, and many more. These strange and remarkable stories are accompanied by the author’s photographs of places featured in the text in this hugely entertaining book.

Paul Darroch is an established local history writer in Jersey. His publications include the books Jersey: The Hidden Histories and Jersey: Secrets of the Sea. He is a regular history podcaster (The History Islands on Apple/Spotify) and a frequent speaker at the Jersey Festival of Words. He is a former Centenary Scholar in Modern History at St Hugh’s College, Oxford and winner of the Shell Economist International Writing Prize. He also regularly reads to classes at local schools and has over a thousand subscribers to his email newsletter.

One of the legends that features in the new book is the legend of Philippe de Carteret’s horse.

Philippe de Carteret, St Ouen’s Pond, Jersey

September 1467

The summer sun was dying in the western sky. Philippe de Carteret watched as the disc of reddish copper plunged into the ocean, and the darkness raced to meet him over the sands.

The grizzled Seigneur of St Ouen lingered on the edge of the dunes awhile longer, lost in the depths of his thoughts. He was tall and vigorous, not yet forty years old, yet a man ageing before his time. His shoulders carried the burden of cares too heavy to measure. His face was riven by scars, for he had fought too hard for too long.

Philippe stood on wounded ground. Barely a century before, a storm had drowned the nearby manor of La Brecquette and scoured the very foundations clean. His father had told him the story many times, of the day the great wave came. Tides can turn so suddenly, he noted, fortunes may change, and many who are now great will later be swallowed up by the sand.

It was a portent of the world to come. In recent years, England had been torn apart by civil war, as the white and red roses of York and Lancaster clashed like duelling dragons, seeking to devour each other. A single flick of their tails had been enough to cast Jersey into the abyss.

The Island proved an ideal bargaining chip, a toy to be traded between princes. The Lancastrian queen had slipped the keys to the French. Through ruse and treachery, a postern gate left ajar at Gorey Castle, the wolf had been let in through the door. His name was the Count of Maulevrier, and he was the new Lord of the Isles. His warlords roamed the parishes without restraint, rustling sheep like vagabonds, plundering without quarter.

There was only one stumbling block to his unfettered power: the lone man staring at the setting sun. Philippe de Carteret was the scion of an ancient line of Jersey nobility. To be sure, a determined army might dislodge him from his bastion, his heavily fortified manor house of St Ouen. Yet the price in blood and treasure would be high, for Philippe commanded the fierce loyalty of the western parishes. Some subtler ruse would be needed to bring him to heel.

Even as the Count seethed with anger, correct chivalric form insisted that a pretence of cordiality should be maintained. The Seigneur and his wife dined with the occupation army at Mont Orgueil; honour was upheld. Yet it was an open secret that Philippe’s true fealty lay with the English crown. His days of safety were numbered, as surely as the hourglass slipped towards sunset.

Philippe turned back to his manorial pond, silvery and smooth as a mirror. He had spent a full day fishing, hoping that the simple rhythm of line and hook could ease his troubled mind. Now the catch was in, the day was done. So, he lobbed a stone into the water, watching the ripples on the pond spread and diminish, until they were finally gone. Like life itself, he mused; drama and passion, fading to black. The lake lay as still as the night.

Philippe’s black steed paced softly behind him on the shoreline, a handsome war horse. They called him a destrier: foremost among his kind, powerful and strong, a visible sign of his lordly status. He had been his faithful companion for years and seen his fair share of combat.

Suddenly, the great horse whinnied: a terrifying and unmistakeable cry of fear. Philippe threw aside his fishing pole and leapt to his feet. In an instant, he sprang up onto the saddle, reaching for his sword, ready to face the imminent threat. It was almost too late.

Armed men were rising up from the sands, curved falchions drawn, ready to seize him, or cleave him in two if he resisted. There must have been nine or ten of them, French soldiers, bristling with knives. Their leader brandished a coil of rope, the better to bind their prisoner. The ambush had been sprung.

The odds were impossible. Philippe spurred his horse, charging across the sands, up and away from the pond, making for the higher ground. It was not an easy flight; the dunes were steep and treacherous, riddled with snares, a natural defensive barrier that protected the Island from the west.

As if in a dream, he rode for the hills, but his lead was slender. The French soldiers had mounted their own chargers. It was evident that these were no common men-at-arms but highly trained knights; the Count had sent his finest riders.

Philippe fled for his life. He felt his horse’s heart exploding as he galloped up the slope, but he dared not ease off for a moment. The Seigneur could already glimpse the rondel tower of his manor house over the horizon, the promise of safety so tantalisingly close. Yet as he crested the hill, a flight of arrows burst above him. Instinctively, he swerved. The bank of arrows ripped into a nearby bank of gorse, burying their heads in the sand.

Philippe had raced straight into a trap. Too late: he saw a hedgehog of halberds bristling at the brow of the hill, a second detachment of soldiers to block him. The Seigneur lurched away and rode hard to the right, desperate to evade them before the jaws of the ambush closed. With a sinking heart, he realised he was trapped.

He was cornered. The land fell sharply away ahead, into a deep wooded valley, Le Val de la Charrière, they called it, a chasm of eighteen feet, three times the height of a man. If he fell down into the bushes below, he would be easy meat. The kidnappers were close on his heels now, steel glinting in the twilight, eager to catch their prey. A vast void of twenty-two feet separated him from safety, an angel’s leap.

The lone rider committed his soul to God. Then, with a desperate burst of power, Philippe spurred his horse and leapt into empty space. The chasm reached forward to swallow him up.

There was a strange moment of falling, as the sun died over the sea. For a moment all was frozen around him; the troop of angry, armoured riders; the horizon burning up at sunset, the green gorse and sand and sea. The stink of sweat flooded his nostrils, rising from the mane of an exhausted black horse. A horse now in mid-leap, hurtling through the air.

Like Pegasus, the horse flew. Then his forelegs struck solid earth, stumbling for grip. He struggled for a moment, but he did not fall. He charged on. At last, the strong walls of the manor were in sight. Lanterns burned on the battlements, beckoning them home.

Horse and rider burst free and clear into the yard. Philippe leapt up as the horse’s forelegs crumpled, and his body slumped to the earth. Overcome by emotion, he embraced his beloved steed, calming him as his lifeblood ebbed into the sandy soil. Then his men-at-arms rushed to meet him, ushering him to safety behind the iron gates of the stronghold. Far away in the night, his dejected foes slunk away, retreating to the east, their plot foiled.

This impossible leap of a faithful steed had changed the fate of an Island. The people would never succumb to the invader, and in time the occupiers were driven out and Jersey returned to the fold of the English crown. The horse’s sacrifice was solemnly remembered. Philippe de Carteret, mourning his loyal steed, ordered that it be buried with honour in a spot right beneath the walls of his fortress.

The legend of the black horse of de Carteret lived on, a tale of valour passed down the generations. It was immortalised in a great painting, hanging with pride of place in the Manor. Some considered it a medieval fable, a mere allegory or symbol. In the centuries to come, it was regularly retold in the guidebooks, a charming fable to amuse Victorian tourists. Perhaps it just was a child’s whisper, a fairy tale, nothing more.

Then, at the dawn of the twentieth century, routine excavations took place in the Manor grounds, digging the foundations for a walled garden. At the very spot recounted in the ancient myth, something curious was unearthed. The labourers were puzzled, until they remembered an ancient story.

They had discovered the bones of a great and noble steed.

Illustrated Tales of Jersey is currently available at the Harbour Gallery, Jersey Museum and of course on Amazon UK. The book is currently on order to Waterstones in Jersey so should be arriving there soon!

© Paul Darroch 2025.

It’s been great to appear on BBC Radio Jersey and to speak at the Jersey Festival of Words and U3A. If you missed these talks, then next week I will be reading some Jersey legends at the United Club in St Helier on Wednesday. If you’d like to come along please RSVP Alta Grundlingh at office@unitedclubjersey.com. I’ve never visited the Club before - so rather looking forward to it. I will bring a few books along too for signing!

United Club Jersey - Wednesday, 8 October 2025 - Paul Darroch Book Talk

Join us for an informative talk on Paul Darroch’s new book: Illustrated Tales of Jersey by the writer himself on Wednesday, 8 October 2025, at 6:15pm.

Free of charge | Cash bar | Nibbles available.

Jersey’s landscape and history are steeped in its folklore and legends. In Illustrated Tales of Jersey, local author Paul Darroch explores a multitude of mysterious myths and strange tales from centuries past. The book reveals the legends surrounding a dragon that ruled Jersey, a long-lost bridge linking the Island with Normandy, the giant storm hound that preyed on Bouley Bay, the martyrdom of Jersey’s patron Saint Helier, the manor under the sea, Jersey’s very own Atlantis, and many more. These strange and remarkable stories are accompanied by the author’s photographs of places featured in the text in this hugely entertaining book.

Paul Darroch is an established local history writer in Jersey. His publications include the books Jersey: The Hidden Histories and Jersey: Secrets of the Sea. He is a regular history podcaster (The History Islands on Apple/Spotify) and a frequent speaker at the Jersey Festival of Words. He is a former Centenary Scholar in Modern History at St Hugh’s College, Oxford and winner of the Shell Economist International Writing Prize. He also regularly reads to classes at local schools and has over a thousand subscribers to his email newsletter.

One of the legends that features in the new book is the legend of Philippe de Carteret’s horse.

Philippe de Carteret, St Ouen’s Pond, Jersey

September 1467

The summer sun was dying in the western sky. Philippe de Carteret watched as the disc of reddish copper plunged into the ocean, and the darkness raced to meet him over the sands.

The grizzled Seigneur of St Ouen lingered on the edge of the dunes awhile longer, lost in the depths of his thoughts. He was tall and vigorous, not yet forty years old, yet a man ageing before his time. His shoulders carried the burden of cares too heavy to measure. His face was riven by scars, for he had fought too hard for too long.

Philippe stood on wounded ground. Barely a century before, a storm had drowned the nearby manor of La Brecquette and scoured the very foundations clean. His father had told him the story many times, of the day the great wave came. Tides can turn so suddenly, he noted, fortunes may change, and many who are now great will later be swallowed up by the sand.

It was a portent of the world to come. In recent years, England had been torn apart by civil war, as the white and red roses of York and Lancaster clashed like duelling dragons, seeking to devour each other. A single flick of their tails had been enough to cast Jersey into the abyss.

The Island proved an ideal bargaining chip, a toy to be traded between princes. The Lancastrian queen had slipped the keys to the French. Through ruse and treachery, a postern gate left ajar at Gorey Castle, the wolf had been let in through the door. His name was the Count of Maulevrier, and he was the new Lord of the Isles. His warlords roamed the parishes without restraint, rustling sheep like vagabonds, plundering without quarter.

There was only one stumbling block to his unfettered power: the lone man staring at the setting sun. Philippe de Carteret was the scion of an ancient line of Jersey nobility. To be sure, a determined army might dislodge him from his bastion, his heavily fortified manor house of St Ouen. Yet the price in blood and treasure would be high, for Philippe commanded the fierce loyalty of the western parishes. Some subtler ruse would be needed to bring him to heel.

Even as the Count seethed with anger, correct chivalric form insisted that a pretence of cordiality should be maintained. The Seigneur and his wife dined with the occupation army at Mont Orgueil; honour was upheld. Yet it was an open secret that Philippe’s true fealty lay with the English crown. His days of safety were numbered, as surely as the hourglass slipped towards sunset.

Philippe turned back to his manorial pond, silvery and smooth as a mirror. He had spent a full day fishing, hoping that the simple rhythm of line and hook could ease his troubled mind. Now the catch was in, the day was done. So, he lobbed a stone into the water, watching the ripples on the pond spread and diminish, until they were finally gone. Like life itself, he mused; drama and passion, fading to black. The lake lay as still as the night.

Philippe’s black steed paced softly behind him on the shoreline, a handsome war horse. They called him a destrier: foremost among his kind, powerful and strong, a visible sign of his lordly status. He had been his faithful companion for years and seen his fair share of combat.

Suddenly, the great horse whinnied: a terrifying and unmistakeable cry of fear. Philippe threw aside his fishing pole and leapt to his feet. In an instant, he sprang up onto the saddle, reaching for his sword, ready to face the imminent threat. It was almost too late.

Armed men were rising up from the sands, curved falchions drawn, ready to seize him, or cleave him in two if he resisted. There must have been nine or ten of them, French soldiers, bristling with knives. Their leader brandished a coil of rope, the better to bind their prisoner. The ambush had been sprung.

The odds were impossible. Philippe spurred his horse, charging across the sands, up and away from the pond, making for the higher ground. It was not an easy flight; the dunes were steep and treacherous, riddled with snares, a natural defensive barrier that protected the Island from the west.

As if in a dream, he rode for the hills, but his lead was slender. The French soldiers had mounted their own chargers. It was evident that these were no common men-at-arms but highly trained knights; the Count had sent his finest riders.

Philippe fled for his life. He felt his horse’s heart exploding as he galloped up the slope, but he dared not ease off for a moment. The Seigneur could already glimpse the rondel tower of his manor house over the horizon, the promise of safety so tantalisingly close. Yet as he crested the hill, a flight of arrows burst above him. Instinctively, he swerved. The bank of arrows ripped into a nearby bank of gorse, burying their heads in the sand.

Philippe had raced straight into a trap. Too late: he saw a hedgehog of halberds bristling at the brow of the hill, a second detachment of soldiers to block him. The Seigneur lurched away and rode hard to the right, desperate to evade them before the jaws of the ambush closed. With a sinking heart, he realised he was trapped.

He was cornered. The land fell sharply away ahead, into a deep wooded valley, Le Val de la Charrière, they called it, a chasm of eighteen feet, three times the height of a man. If he fell down into the bushes below, he would be easy meat. The kidnappers were close on his heels now, steel glinting in the twilight, eager to catch their prey. A vast void of twenty-two feet separated him from safety, an angel’s leap.

The lone rider committed his soul to God. Then, with a desperate burst of power, Philippe spurred his horse and leapt into empty space. The chasm reached forward to swallow him up.

There was a strange moment of falling, as the sun died over the sea. For a moment all was frozen around him; the troop of angry, armoured riders; the horizon burning up at sunset, the green gorse and sand and sea. The stink of sweat flooded his nostrils, rising from the mane of an exhausted black horse. A horse now in mid-leap, hurtling through the air.

Like Pegasus, the horse flew. Then his forelegs struck solid earth, stumbling for grip. He struggled for a moment, but he did not fall. He charged on. At last, the strong walls of the manor were in sight. Lanterns burned on the battlements, beckoning them home.

Horse and rider burst free and clear into the yard. Philippe leapt up as the horse’s forelegs crumpled, and his body slumped to the earth. Overcome by emotion, he embraced his beloved steed, calming him as his lifeblood ebbed into the sandy soil. Then his men-at-arms rushed to meet him, ushering him to safety behind the iron gates of the stronghold. Far away in the night, his dejected foes slunk away, retreating to the east, their plot foiled.

This impossible leap of a faithful steed had changed the fate of an Island. The people would never succumb to the invader, and in time the occupiers were driven out and Jersey returned to the fold of the English crown. The horse’s sacrifice was solemnly remembered. Philippe de Carteret, mourning his loyal steed, ordered that it be buried with honour in a spot right beneath the walls of his fortress.

The legend of the black horse of de Carteret lived on, a tale of valour passed down the generations. It was immortalised in a great painting, hanging with pride of place in the Manor. Some considered it a medieval fable, a mere allegory or symbol. In the centuries to come, it was regularly retold in the guidebooks, a charming fable to amuse Victorian tourists. Perhaps it just was a child’s whisper, a fairy tale, nothing more.

Then, at the dawn of the twentieth century, routine excavations took place in the Manor grounds, digging the foundations for a walled garden. At the very spot recounted in the ancient myth, something curious was unearthed. The labourers were puzzled, until they remembered an ancient story.

They had discovered the bones of a great and noble steed.

Illustrated Tales of Jersey is currently available at the Harbour Gallery, Jersey Museum and of course on Amazon UK. The book is currently on order to Waterstones in Jersey so should be arriving there soon!

© Paul Darroch 2025.

The Lost Stones of Jersey

Jersey is an Island of ghosts. I speak not of the men and women who have lived and died here over the tumultuous centuries, but of the great landmarks that have stood here and fallen. A few have left skeletons to remember them, like the mammoths of old. Think of the great fortress at Grosnez, whose broken carcass frames the western sunset.

Other landmarks have simply vanished into history, lingering only in sepia photographs. No living man remembers the caves of Five Oaks, the folly at La Hougue Bie, or our very own ‘Eiffel Tower’, the weather observatory at Maison St Louis. Yet long before all of these stood a more ancient monument still, set high on the Town Hill, watching over St Aubin’s Bay.

Jersey’s Stonehenge, they would call it, a ring of stones that must have endured thousands of winters and glimmered through countless summers. The wheel of history turned, empires rose and fell, and the blunt molars on the hill outlasted them all. The dolmen and their passage grave remained on the barren outcrop above St Helier, until they too were buried by time and age.

The Town Hill was a sacred place. When mysterious footprints were discovered, believed to be those of the Virgin Mary, the chapel of Notre Dame des Pas was built in her honour on its south-eastern flank. The Hill was a powerful vantage point, towering over the straggling huts of St Helier that gathered at its feet. In times of peace, the Seigneur of Samarès chased rabbits over its summit, and cattle grazed idly upon its bleak slopes. In times of war, its commanding views became a vital strategic asset.

The French invasion of 1781 – when the Battle of Jersey raged savagely in Royal Square - revealed the sheer inadequacy of Jersey’s defences. The time had finally come to tame the Town Hill and remodel it in the service of war. It would become Jersey’s Rock of Gibraltar, a stout stronghold, a British fortress. The Governor of Jersey, General Henry Seymour Conway, gave orders to scour the land, mapping it and moulding it, making plans for the work to come.

We meet him on a humid August morning in 1785, as sea-fog is rolling in from the south. The Colonel of the Militia is adamant; the drill field must be cleared today. His men would rather be downing cider in the taverns, but today they must level the land. They set to work with picks and shovels, sweat soon rising beneath their red militia jackets.

When the men start to break up a grassy mound, they strike hard rock. To their astonishment, this hillock is perched on granite stones, and they do not seem to have fallen here naturally. These sentinels have been painstakingly arranged; guardians left by a race of ancient men. A dark corridor opens into the earth, a passage grave leading into the darkness of a forgotten world.

The militiamen shrug. Mysterious barrows have long been part of the warp and weft of Jersey’s landscape, after all. Granite teeth glint across every parish; broken ceremonial stones have littered the hills since time immemorial. These new discoveries are mere obstacles to an evening of good cheer and ale. Yet suddenly a shiver runs through the camp; the Governor himself is approaching. The militiamen hastily smarten themselves, and assemble, and salute.

General Conway, an Old Etonian and self-appointed scion of the Enlightenment, sweeps into the field. He is utterly bewitched by the discovery. He peers into the darkness, running his hand over the cold stone that has been buried for so long. His antiquarian enthusiasms piqued, the General demands further and deeper excavations. The soldiers return to their labours.

And here they will unearth a perfect Stonehenge in miniature, a stone circle, the inheritance of a mysterious and inaccessible age. The crowning glory of Jersey’s Neolithic past was revealed. Standing in a seventy-two-foot circle, the granite monoliths were finally exposed to the fresh sunlight of an utterly different world.

Conway exulted in the discovery. It must be a Druid’s temple, he mused, a historically valuable relic of the wild time before the Romans subdued the world. The wily landowners of La Vingtaine shrugged at the General’s curiosity, his eccentric interest in a bundle of old stones. Yet they quickly spied a way to inveigle their way into his good favour. They would proffer him the stones as a gift of thanksgiving.

They beseeched “him to be so good as to accept the ancient monument which has been recently discovered on La Montagne de la Ville. They trust that His Excellency will not decline to accept this feeble but sincere tribute of their gratefulness". Legend has it that Conway was initially reluctant, fearing the cost of transit, but Horace Walpole, son of the first British Prime Minister, urged him to receive the gift. "Pray do not disappoint me but transport the Cathedral of your island to your domain on our continent."

Conway yielded; for the pile of rocks would make a most charming addition to his English country estate at Park Place. So, in 1788, the stones were felled from their hilltop, hauled onto ships; and they crossed the rough seas to a new island. Their old home was already dying; for in the decades to come, the Town Hill would be transformed into a mighty fortress. It would be given a new name, too: Fort Regent.

The old Town Hill was gone, fortified by the might of the British Army. The medieval Chapel of Notre Dame des Pas was blown up in 1814, its historic stones shredded, lest they provide shelter for an invading force. In time the Fort itself would become a relic, and was crowned by a graceful, mighty dome; until that too was threatened with demolition. The ancient Town Hill was forgotten.

The circle, however, endured. Near the banks of the meandering Thames, the dolmen was reassembled and embellished. The red granite stones that once towered over the tides of Jersey, and the drowned coast of St Clement, found a strange afterlife in the gentle folds of an Oxfordshire country estate.

The stones stand there to this day; lost fragments of Jersey; a scattering of wild red granite nestled in an English country garden. The sea still sings in their landlocked veins.

The centuries have slipped by like sand. The stones wait in silence, far from the barren hill, far from the place they knew before. Some say they will find their way home in time, and the lost stones of Jersey will return.

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You can purchase Illustrated Tales of Jersey today on Amazon UK. It will be available in Jersey bookshops such as WH Smith and Waterstones very soon.

Paul’s previous Jersey books are available here.

Music - ‘Chariots’ by Gavin Luke - courtesy of Epidemic Sound

This story features in my new book, Illustrated Tales of Jersey, which will be published by Amberley on September 15th 2025 and is available from Amazon here.

It is based on a medieval Jersey legend. The tale most likely arose in the twelfth century, when Jersey was still part of the Duchy of Normandy.

The Isles, they whispered, were stepping-stones, forming a bridge between earth and heaven. They lay far to the west of the Cotentin, in the arms of the setting sun, steps in a celestial ladder that reached from the forest to the skies.

The greatest of them all was Jersey. Latticed by dolmens, barely touched by Roman hands, it remained a hooded and mysterious realm. Sea and land were woven together here. At low tide, the seabed dried to reveal a mosaic of rocks and silent pools. This sandy kingdom would drown as the hourglass emptied, swamped by the flood tide.

The dragon that ruled the island slept by the shores of St Lawrence, where the tides poured in across the bay and collided with the dunes. This was deep and treacherous bogland, a maze of marram grass. Green marsh-fires burned here night and day, ghostly flames dancing over the sands. On moonless nights such as these, the dread beast of St Lawrence would stir.

The dragon crept inside their dreams at first, tormenting the peasant on her straw mat, the fat Seigneur between his ermine sheets. Each sleeper first heard the rhythmic beating of scaly, bony wings, echoing through the chambers of the night. Each dreamer glimpsed its emerald scales, its savage lantern eyes. Sometimes it swooped down like a falcon, lunging at their children, ravaging their precious crops. Sometimes its lightning breath tore up the sky, setting the woods ablaze, exulting when homesteads burned.

Desperate families fled to the stone sanctuary of St Lawrence’s church, barricading the doors, prostrating themselves before the altar until the terror overhead had passed. On brighter days, they tried to forget their creeping fear, pretended it was but a winter’s tale, until the teeth-marks in the barns and the scorched orchards put the lie to their denials.

The dragon was growing stronger, fed by fear. It began to devour a greater portion of the land and razed entire cornfields with its fiery breath. So, the villagers of St Lawrence called for their Rector, a holy man who knew the secret lore of letters. He penned an urgent plea, in clunky Latin, to the distant Seigneur of Hambie in Normandy. They said he was the bravest and strongest knight who lived across the sea, and so they begged him for rescue.

Their prayers were answered. In those days, the rickety ‘planche’, or wooden bridge from the continent to the Ecréhous, was still standing. The Seigneur boldly marched over the waters, his squire at his side. He was advancing in years now, his black hair flecked with silver, a wounded veteran scarred by decades of struggle. Still, his faith and fight were both undimmed. He bore the Chi Rho banner of Constantine on his shield, and two burnished leopards on his banner. His squire, Hugo, was a strapping lad of eighteen, with the raw energy of a hunting dog, but eyes as grey as granite. A barque with torches carried them west across the deep Ruau channel, until eventually they landed at the long beach of Grouville. The dragon wheeled in the sky above, watching the travellers, waiting for the struggle it knew was coming soon.

Summer breathed its warmth upon Jersey. For a month, Sir Hambie and his squire lived on the land, brothers-in-arms on a noble quest, tracking down their sworn foe. They finally stumbled across the dragon on the longest day of the year, when the sun streamed over the horizon and hung like a red copper plate in the sky. Their clash of steel rang out for hours like a blacksmith’s anvil; the battle between honest blade and raging claw. The Seigneur sliced the tail off the great worm, but it roared in vengeance and set the lord on fire. The foul marsh-water extinguished the flame, but the Seigneur was charred and wounded.

As the heat of noonday burst forth, the tables turned at last. The dragon drew its strength from shade and dark, and as they duelled in blazing sunshine its ferocity waned, and its strength withered. At the third hour, with a final cry, the Seigneur raised his golden sword to the sky and slashed the dragon’s brain clean through. The serpent coiled in agony, then went limp. Its scales sheared off one by one like tears, and it sank back into the mud. The foul dragon of St Lawrence had been slain.

Sir Hambie lay burned and bruised, and blood flowed from his side. He staggered as if to drink fresh wine, as the marshland span around him. He beckoned for his loyal squire, to tend his wounds. Hugo sauntered over, but instead of succour he brandished a hunting knife. Sir Hambie was too weak to fight him. His throat was slashed, a spreading red ribbon, and he bled to death in the fetid marsh.

Hugo returned to his master’s castle in Normandy, robed in his stolen glory. When he arrived at the gates of Hambie, the Lady of the Castle begged for news of her beloved husband. His tearful story had the beguiling illusion of truth. “Your husband died a hero. The dragon slew him, but in righteous anger I rose up myself and killed the beast”. The beautiful, broken widow was touched to the core, so Hugo weaved his final and most insidious lie. “His very last wish, my Lady, was that I might prove myself worthy of your love”.

He cajoled and caressed her in her grief, and before long he wed the Lady. The grand fountains and estates of Hambie, the four-poster bed, and the blind devotion of a grieving wife had fallen into his lap like stolen treasure. The circle of deception was complete. Then one day the dragon, its scales shimmering in moon-fire, returned. Beating wings started to haunt his dreams.

Midnight at the lord’s castle. A screeching cry, a slashing tail - and the dragon’s eye fixed the pretender with a hypnotic grip. Hugo was compelled by his nightmare to scream out the truth. “I killed him! I killed the Seigneur of Hambie! I declare my crime!”. The Lady nestling in his arms was woken by the scream of his confession. Suddenly the cold ring of truth clattered like a dagger dropped on flagstones. She summoned her guardsman to question this cuckoo in her bed. Under interrogation, he would sing like a nightingale.

The Lady of Hambie was merciless in her rage. Hugo was hung from the highest tree, and his corpse was thrown to the dogs. She had been seduced by his lies; now she would see that her noble first husband’s memory was honoured for ever.

So, she travelled to that far country, to the island of mists and treasure, where the marsh-fires still burned on the shores of the bay. The people of Jersey remembered the brave knight who had come this way and had rid them of the terrible beast. They had safeguarded his body in a stone chamber, and it showed no sign of decay. So, she carried his miraculously preserved body to a holy and beautiful place in the east of the Isle and raised a hill of earth to mark his passing.

The great mound stood proud and tall, a gigantic grave-marker that she could glimpse even from her château in Normandy. She dubbed it La Hougue de Hambie; later generations would truncate the name to La Hougue Bie.

The wheel of history turned, and the old world changed. In time the marshes of fire were drained, the bridge to the Ecréhous sank, and the age of dragons fell into legend. Later, they would build a stone chapel on the summit, the better to remember their hero’s name. They say the Seigneur of Hambie sleeps there still, buried by the fallen centuries, his sword by his side. The seasons turn, and time empties its hourglass, and he watches us silently from beneath his carpet of grass and leaves.

They say the dragon did not entirely vanish either. His fire was gone, but his shadow remained. He found his way through to other realms, other dreams.

This tale features in my new book - Illustrated Tales of Jersey - which is available for pre-order from Amazon here. You can also book a ticket to hear me speak at the Jersey Festival of Words on September 27th 2025 here.

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Music: Chariots by Gavin Luke, courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

(c) Paul Darroch 2025. Published by Open Page Learning Ltd, 9 Bond Street, St Helier JE2 3NP. Registered in Jersey with company number 141338.

Illustrated Tales of Jersey is available for pre-order on Amazon UK here, with a publication date of September 15th. Once the books arrive in the Island, it will also be on sale in Waterstones, WHSmith and the Harbour Gallery.

There’s also a book launch at the Jersey Festival of Words on September 27th. I will be speaking about the inspiration behind the book and reading some of the tales. You can obtain tickets for the event here.

Finally, here’s the publisher’s summary. Happy reading!

~ Paul Darroch

Jersey’s landscape and history are steeped in its folklore and legends. In Illustrated Tales of Jersey, local author Paul Darroch explores a multitude of mysterious myths and strange tales from centuries past. The book reveals the legends of the dragon that tormented Jersey, the giant storm hound that preyed on Bouley Bay, and the long-lost bridge across the water to France.

The tales span the Island, from Geoffrey’s Leap in the east to the manor of La Brecquette in the west, which was swept away by the waves and became Jersey’s very own Atlantis. We witness the martyrdom of Saint Helier and the day that de Carteret’s horse made its impossible leap across the void.

True tales from Victorian times include the heartbreaking tragedy of the SS Stella, and the curious reign of Philippe Pinel, the Hermit King.

These strange and remarkable stories are accompanied by the author’s photographs of places featured, making for a hugely engaging and entertaining read.

Pre-order now - Illustrated Tales of Jersey

I’m Paul Darroch, and welcome to another episode of the History Islands. This is the true story of Louisa Journeaux, and it’s taken from my second book, Jersey: Secrets of the Sea.

It is the Spring of 1886. Queen Victoria is nearing her forty-ninth glorious year on the throne, and the ageing William Gladstone is embarking on his third ministry. In New York, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty is being completed; in France, Gustave Eiffel is promoting his radical designs for a quite astonishing tower. Yet as the new year dawns, Jersey finds itself in the grip of turbulence, of a banking crisis. Hard on the heels of the Jersey Banking Company’s collapse comes the shocking news that, as a result, the venerable Charles Robin Company itself has been plunged into bankruptcy.

In these unsettling times, it is curious that the tragic story of an ordinary Jersey girl gripped the imagination of Jersey press and people alike. Yet the unsettling tale fulfilled so many of the sensibilities of any Victorian narrative, offering original sin, a damsel in distress, a dramatic court trial, a terrible ordeal and a surprising deus ex machina resolution. Yet this quintessentially Victorian tale belongs in no penny dreadful or Dickens periodical. It is the astonishing true story of Miss Louisa Journeaux, a guileless young lady from St Clement.

April 1886

“We are all just a slip away from oblivion. Any of us can fall in an instant. Consider our dear neighbour: a precious young lady, a churchgoer no less, who paid a terrible price for a moment’s madness. She placed her very life, her trust, into the hands of a young man she barely knew, and he threw her into the abyss. Remember her fate tonight and pray for her soul”.

The preacher wielded his words like sharpened knives, letting their echoes clatter down onto the flagstones. Every syllable cut deep. The congregation cowered, recoiling in shock, for they knew this tale all too well. The whole Island had grieved for a month now, speaking of little else save the heart-rending story of Miss Louisa Journeaux, of St Clement’s Parish, presumed dead.

Louisa’s tragedy was the shame of the Island, the anguished lament of newspaper correspondents, the daily prattle at the Town Pump. True, the Honorary Police were yet to find any trace of a body, merely the remnants of her pathetic, broken parasol. Yet it would surely be only a matter of time before her swollen corpse came in with the tide.

Everyone knew the dreadful mistake that poor sweet girl had made. Her final moments were known only unto God, but the outcome of the tragedy was clear to all. Louisa Journeaux would never be coming home.

Louisa Journeaux

St Helier, Jersey

Sunday - April 18, 1886

It was Palm Sunday, the day when Jesus rode his donkey into Jerusalem long ago. The promise of Easter was just around the corner, and I had bought some lovely greeting cards, showing fluffy chicks pulling fairy carriages. Unbeknownst to my younger cousins, I had also scoffed a tray of Fry’s gorgeous chocolate eggs, but I would be sure to replenish my supplies before the Easter Egg Hunt itself.

My cousin Julia and I had dozed dutifully through Evensong, but it was such a beautiful evening, that kind of clear Spring day in Jersey when the sky is simply ablaze with colour. It seemed far too early to retire to bed. True, I am twenty-two years old now (whisper it softly!) but Julia and I are still little girls at heart; we simply fancied another adventure.

After church, we strolled down through Royal Square, where we had seen all those handsome and dashing soldiers on parade – it must have been five years ago - to mark the centenary of the Battle of Jersey. Of course, this being a Sunday evening, all the shops were boarded up now, their shutters drawn down. The brash advertising hoardings advertised the fine merits of Perrot’s print-shop to just a few passing pigeons. And as we walked down past the Public Library, a peal of gorgeous birdsong burst around us.

It promised to be a glorious sunset. We soon broke out onto the Weighbridge and were greeted by a forest of tall masts. It seemed to me that each one was whispering salt-tanged promises of faraway harbours, and every ship had a secret to share. My heart began to sing.

Caught in this haze of delight, we were strolling down to the waterfront with our parasols, when two young Frenchmen caught our eye. They were larking around near the Westaway Memorial, dancing right in front of the railway terminus, and with typical Gallic bravura, they brooked absolutely no delay in introducing themselves to us.

The eldest I recognised at once; M. Jules Farné, a young gentleman I had already laughingly conversed with a few times at the shop counter. He was a dapper hairdresser with a wayward smile and an accent that soon enough melted my heart. “Would you like to join us for a drink of cocoa?” He regaled us with delightful tales of Paris; of Spring in Montmartre, of artists and cherry trees, and the astonishing ice-white basilica they are apparently building there, high above the city. I was hooked like a fish.

His best friend, M. Radiguet, who was a little less bold, lavished his courtly attentions on my cousin Julia. We all laughed and joked together, and shared steaming cups of hot chocolate as the rays of the evening sun lapped down over the Weighbridge. The night was balmy, and the moon was rising high above the Fort. Then suddenly a madcap notion darted into our evening like a sparrow falling in the square.

Jules proposed it so flamboyantly, so poetically; and I was at once bewitched. “Let us take to the water”, he told me. “Let us drink in the moonlight together. It is the French way. I will be your captain. I will take you out upon the waters, and then I will lead you home”.

Two days later.

Channel Approaches, west of Jersey

Tuesday - April 20, 1886

The raw anger of the Atlantic slams with the force of a cudgel against Louisa’s matchstick boat. She is thrown hard by the shock of the breaking wave, and rolls like a rag-doll across the timbers, grasping at them for sheer life. She is too numb to cry.

Louisa is far from home now, dozens of cold nautical miles away from land. Stripped of its oars, her little skiff is casually tossed by swells the size of hills; is cast like a child’s wooden toy over a sea-crest, then spins away to float gently in its sluggish wake.

In these brief moments of respite, Louisa finds herself working like an ox, despite her utter exhaustion, to bail out the saltwater that is slowly drowning her craft. She scoops it out with Jules Farné’s hard felt cap, the last reminder of the would-be lover who had left her to die.

The Atlantic Ocean is an unforgiving place, where sky and sea merge, and gut-churning swells drench and batter her boat. Yet there is a strange beauty in this void. In the icy stillness of the night, the stars hang as close and bright as lanterns, blazing across the skies from pole to pole. No-one else is here to witness the astonishing sight. On her first night at sea, Louisa briefly glimpsed the Southampton steamer cutting up the horizon; since then she has been utterly alone.

Everything in this world is drenched to the core, corroded by a seamless curtain of sea and rain. Her dainty ladies’ parasol was lost in her first night on the water; now she faces the second night with no shelter at all. Louisa’s Sunday best, her church finery, are mere sodden rags and a heavy chill has started to gnaw into her bones, turning her legs to lead.

Louisa’s raging thirst is slaked only by mouthfuls of rainwater, but she is still feverish, driven to delusion by the pummelling tides. Somewhere deep inside, Louisa is preparing to die. Her thoughts are flying away with the seabirds across the black ocean, and her mind is slowly turning as numb as her hands. For a fleeting moment, she half-remembers the comfort of her father’s cosy fireside; but tonight, her home feels as distant as the icy moon.

A sorrowing pall of grief hangs over that childhood home, Elder Cottage in St Clement. No-one in the Parish can forget the shock of that awful first night when her cousin Julia returned; shrieking like a demented banshee, and alone. Neighbours clucked behind curtains when the Centenier rode by at daybreak; now parishioners cross themselves in sympathy as they pass the smitten house. Louisa’s ageing parents are cloistered within, riven by grief, confined to their beds. As news spreads, a pulse of anger is seething across the Island; more than a handful of hot-tempered young lads are already thirsting to beat Jules Farné to a pulp. To keep the spectre of mob rule at bay, the wheels of Jersey justice are grinding forward with unaccustomed speed.

By now Jules, the sometime rowing boat captain, is impounded in the St Helier police cells, in the stern custody of Centenier Le Gros. He had been found clinging like a limpet to the pier-head, half-drowned and blathering. Under police interrogation, the facts have started to tumble out like a haul of fish; slippery, evasive and thrashing with obvious contradictions. Yet with the help of the distraught witnesses and with the shadow of the gallows lurking in his fearful imagination, the authorities slowly gather a clearer picture of the night’s tragic events.

It had all begun with such an innocent fancy. Jules confessed he was desperate to romantically impress Louisa, and despite his sketchy nautical skills, he was confident he could capably handle a little rowing boat in a sheltered harbour. So, the young Frenchmen hired skiffs from portly Mr le Feu; Louisa and Jules would share one of them. The boat-keeper warned this was foolhardy, that night would be falling soon, but the youths were bothersome and insistent, so he reluctantly trousered their coin.

It was already a quarter past eight, and the dying sun was slipping down behind Noirmont, when the two skiffs finally slipped away from their moorings. At first it was a jaunt, a sheer lark, punctuated by giggles and banter. Louisa and Jules began to drown in each other’s eyes. At sea, any prying gossips would scarcely see the couple nudging dangerously closer. The sky glowed a soft and gentle pink, with dark blue cotton-clouds painted as if by hand onto the golden sunset. Seagulls cawed and circled overhead.

They soon made the pier-end, but caution be damned: the water was as smooth as a millpond. It was an unseasonably humid night and Jules, drenched in perspiration, loosened his tie a little and unbuttoned the upper buttons of his shirt. The skiff glided silently across the water, and Louisa was soon hypnotised by the rhythm of the oars. He would give her one last adventure, he promised. He would race out to the Castle and complete a final glorious circuit under the moon, then ferry her safely home.

The last magical lap at sunset unfolded in a shared dream. Louisa was besotted with this oarsman’s skill; he was clearly no novice. Then the first stars nuzzled out from behind the night-clouds, dancing a chorus of blessings. Jules pulled the skiff back into the embrace of the Victoria and Albert piers. Now was the time. He swung both oars in, boldly grasped her milk-white hand and moved in ever closer, drawing her towards a moonlight kiss.

“Then I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gate of heaven…” As he did so, his concentration lapsed. The first oar slipped from its rowlock and splashed noisily into the harbour. Jules swore in French and attempted to turn the boat, but he was fumbling and distracted, and the second oar followed it under. The tide was now ebbing fast out to sea, tugged by the magnetic pull of the moon. The moment called for action. Jules deftly leaped into the sea to chase the oars, but emerged spluttering like a fish, empty-handed. He tossed his felt cap back into the boat, then vanished. The tide was relentless now, and his screams were lost in the rising darkness.

Louisa was gone. Her boat was hurtling away fast on a brutal ebb tide. She screamed back – for Jules, for help, for deliverance. No-one came. She screeched again, until her throat was blood-raw and her eyes stinging with tears. No-one heard. Then the glittering lights of St Helier receded as if in a dream, with the Weighbridge lamps a last painted flourish of yellow in a canvas that was fast rolling up behind her.

Within minutes, the landward horizon was a smear of black coal, and the last points of light had utterly faded. Louisa was viciously dragged out to sea by the raw power of the tides, as if tied to a runaway horse, or carried away on a locomotive with no driver. Stinging drops of rain started to pelt down like daggers. She raised her flimsy parasol to counter them, and it shredded in minutes. Then everything faded to black, and her bearings dissolved in the darkness. Her world had shrivelled to the sodden innards of an open boat. Her last cries muffled by the rainstorm, and far from any shore, Louisa fell away into the night.

The Royal Court was packed to the gills on the day the prisoner was dragged in for his trial. The Crown’s formal charge struck the young man with the force of an oar to his skull. Jules Farné, had “by his neglect and imprudence, caused the death or disappearance of Louisa Journeaux”. A parade of witnesses was called forth to testify. A broken parasol had been found washed up on the rocky headland at La Collette, and Mr F. Journeaux formally identified it as belonging to his beloved daughter Louisa. The press summarised his testimony: “Last Sunday his daughter attended divine service, and afterwards went for a walk. He did not know the accused; but was aware his daughter was acquainted with him”. Then Miss Julia Wiltshire, dressed in black, gave her own solemn account of the fatal rowing trip.

The rival Advocates jousted like medieval knights, sparring with brutal parries, rhetorical lunges and the occasional chivalrous flourish. The prisoner had given two separate, conflicting accounts; but Advocate Le Gallais, defending, “maintained that the whole thing had been a deplorable accident”. His words carried weight. In the end, the Magistrate determined that there was insufficient evidence to convict the accused. Jules Farné had failed miserably in his duty as a gentleman, but no foul play had been proven, and, above all, the search had yielded no body.

Silently, and under the withering stare of the Constable, Jules Farné was released from the cells in the early hours. All eyes were on him, following him down the street, waiting for an opportune moment to intercept him. So, he sprinted down to the docks and fled on the first ferry to France, just one step ahead of the wolves.

Public interest, verging on hysteria, remained high. A letter to the British Press and Jersey Times lamented that laws on prohibiting skiffs to roam outside the harbour would be somewhat fruitless “in these liberty-loving days”. Yet Victorian ingenuity and practicality offered a better way: the writer proposed “an efficacious remedy… every scull must have a lanyard made fast to it just inboard of the rowlock. By this simple arrangement, an oarsman could never lose his sculls, even if he tried to”.

Truth to tell, few had come out of this tragic episode with much credit. The young ladies had been foolishly naïve; the Frenchmen reckless albeit not criminally culpable; the boat-owner rather too keen to pocket coin on the Sabbath. Much criticism also centred on the shockingly sluggish speed of the official rescue operation. It was a full day before the Duke of Normandy tug boat steamed round the coast, hunting for signs of a rowing boat, or timber wreckage, or a sea-bloated body.

All efforts failed; every search drew a blank in the vast labyrinth of the seas. In desperation, soldiers dynamited the sea-bed between the piers, but the muffled explosion dredged up only a tangle of fishing nets and some timbers from an old wreck. There was no sign of the young lady who had rowed here at twilight on Sunday evening. Louisa had been swept off the face of the Earth.

Prayers went unanswered; headlines moved on. In Elder Cottage, grief festered deep in the bone. The weeks slid by. And then came a knock on the door. An urgent telegram had arrived, from across the face of the globe.

Louisa’s Story

Crown Colony of Newfoundland

God rescued me, and I will never know the reason why. I was no Grace Darling, giving up my brave life to save mariners. I was certainly no Nightingale. I was just a foolish, reckless girl. I had spent my last breath of hope, and accepted my inevitable fate, when I first saw that ship steaming towards me. I had no strength and no voice left; I had only my sodden pocket handkerchief to wave. It was enough.

As if in a dream, the great vessel came alongside and threw me a rope, but I was far too weak to grab it and the ship sailed on by. Tombold of St Malo, its stern proudly read; a French Atlantic steamer.

So, the sailors turned back and rescued me. They carried me like a child, deep into the bowels of their ship. Captain Edouard Landgren, my hero, my second father, had saved my life. He ushered me to a modest cabin and to me it was as welcome as a royal palace. He offered me a set of his own clothes, which were mercifully dry if (I confess) hardly flattering for a twenty-two-year-old lady! He plied me with sweet cider (which I refused) and strong hot tea (which I lapped up); but I soon collapsed into a deep and dreamless sleep. I woke to find the cabin lurching like fury around me. Soon after they found me, the ocean had erupted into a savage storm. I had been plucked from the maw of the beast.

The violence of the weather prevented any hope of return; we were unable to change course but ploughed on for some two thousand three hundred miles across the Atlantic. The voyage was long and bitter; some three weeks into the journey, one sailor was swept overboard and drowned in the deep. Yet the French sailors treated me ever so kindly, as if I was an honoured princess aboard their ship. Twenty-six long days and nights later, the shores of the North American continent hove into view, sheer cliffs shrouded in a thick peasouper that reminded me very much of home.

They tried to moor in the French fishing grounds of St Pierre and Miquelon, but the fog prevented it. So, they ducked in to the tiny fishing harbour at St George’s, where the Rev Jeffrey and his wife welcomed me in. The sun burst through at noon. As fate would have it, it was another beautiful Sunday afternoon when my rowing expedition across the Atlantic Ocean finally came to its appointed end.

And so today I am seated in a small bureau in St John’s, the colonial capital of Newfoundland, observing a most curious and beautiful device. It is an incredible instrument, resembling a piano keyboard, but with twenty-six keys, one for each letter of the alphabet. Spinning behind it is an electric motor and rotating mechanical drums, like some mesmeric creation from a Jules Verne novel. They say an undersea cable runs from this very room, thousands of miles across the ocean to Valentia Island in Ireland, thence to London, and finally over to Jersey. It feels like an umbilical cord calling me home. The Colonial Secretary has ordered a telegram to be sent to the office of Her Majesty Queen Victoria herself.

This is the machine that sent my incredible story to the other side of the Earth. This is the device that told my Father that I am alive. Now it will tell my family that I am coming back soon, across the great divide, and that soon enough I will see their faces once again. Before the summer is out, I will stand on Jersey soil.

The machine is ready now, whirring with the strange power of electricity, pulsing with the hope of tomorrow. Then the operator reaches for the keyboard, and silently begins to tap my message home.

Louisa Journeaux was safe; a survivor who had endured the raw power of the ocean and had lived to tell the tale. Captain Landgren was feted and presented with a gold medal at the Town Hall, but Louisa shunned the attention. She settled down to a conventional life, working in a draper’s store in St Helier, and she would live to a ripe old age.

Thank you for reading. This story is taken from my second book, Jersey: Secrets of the Sea, which is available from Amazon, Waterstones in Jersey, WH Smith and the Harbour Gallery.

© Paul Darroch 2025.

Music - Chariots by Gavin Luke. Courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Welcome to another episode of the History Islands, where we continue our tour of Jersey’s lost landmarks.

Let us turn east to the ancient site of La Hougue Bie, where in 1913, one of Jersey’s greatest monuments still stood, albeit in an advanced state of decay.

Its story begins with Philippe Dauvergne – an astonishingly charismatic and restless young man, born in 1754. He travels to the ends of the earth. He heads into the icy death zone of the Arctic, fighting polar bears, travelling with Horatio Nelson. As a young naval officer visiting Russia, Empress Catherine the Great tries to seduce him. In the American Revolution, he leads an attack on Long Island. He is present at the Battle of Bunker Hill, as the United States is born.

Then, in a surreal turn of events, he is held prisoner in a dungeon in Carhaix in France where, by a bizarre coincidence he comes to the attention of Godefroy de la Tour d’Auvergne, the Duc de Bouillon. The ruler of a dukedom in modern day Belgium, he is a libertine with no legitimate heir and is desperate for a worthy son he can bequeath his lands to.

The old duke is entranced by Philippe’s charm and his strikingly similar surname. He whisks his new protégé away to a palace in the forest in Brittany. Philippe somehow talks himself into inheriting a dukedom. In 1786, Dauvergne is formally offered the Dukedom of Bouillon, with the motto “Nous ne changeons pas: We do not change”. Now he calls himself D’Auvergne, in the French style.

We follow the story in this extract from my first book, Jersey: The Hidden Histories:

Here in Jersey, d’Auvergne decided to reconstruct the magical apparition of royalty that had once greeted him in the Breton forest. He took in hand the sacred, ancient site of La Hougue Bie, which stretched back into the dark era of prehistory, a place where legends are forged. It was ironically a former rival for the dukedom, Corret, who obsessed over druidic remains and first bequeathed the words menhir and dolmen to the language. The true heir to the throne of d’Auvergne had grander plans. Over the bones of the medieval chapel, he decided to construct an extraordinary Gothic fantasia. The locals soon dubbed it Prince’s Tower, and its spectacular turrets and battlements soared high above Jersey, taller than any other landmark.

From the fine heights of this flamboyant octagonal tower, all twelve parishes of Jersey unfurled at his feet like a green carpet. The Tower proved a capital signalling station, offering panoramic views of the enemy coast. Princely dinners and sumptuous wines were served in its dining hall. Meanwhile, the ancient Jerusalem chapel served as a fine library.

From this lofty vantage point, the prince-wizard surveyed the restless lives of scurrying mortals, spinning a web of intrigue across Europe, manipulating resistance and orchestrating sabotage. D’Auvergne’s efforts are in vain. His spies fail. Out of the chaos and bloodshed of the French Revolution, a new leader rises. In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor.

Meanwhile, in 1802, the invalid seventh Duke of Bouillon died and Philippe d’Auvergne at last assumed the mantle of ‘His Serene Highness’. The next year he followed in the footsteps of his old Arctic rival, Horatio Nelson, and was elevated to the prestigious title of Knight Grand Commander of the Order of St Joachim. The Jersey sailor-boy was now installed amongst the crown princes of Europe, and merely awaited the end of the war to claim his glorious prize. It seemed as if the fairy tale was drawing towards its final, magnificent chapter.

As late as 1815, D’Auvergne, the would-be prince, is still confident the Congress of Vienna will award him the duchy of Bouillon. He even has coins minted with his face on it. Meanwhile Napoleon returns to face ultimate defeat at Waterloo. When the Congress reconvenes, it rejects D’Auvergne’s claim. In the end, he receives neither the duchy, nor the estates, nor compensation. He has bankrupted himself in search of his dream.

In 1816, Philippe D’Auvergne dies in a squalid London hotel, his illusion shattered.

Prince’s Tower outlived its master, if only for a time. It became a curiosity, a Gothic pleasure-park boasting faux-medieval touches beloved of the sentimental Victorians. The Prince’s Tower Hotel opened in the grounds, serving high tea with fine views of this decaying folly. Black-clad children scampered in the gardens. Tourists marvelled and cooed at the vertiginous views. Yet eventually the Tower began to crumble and rot from the inside, a slowly decaying dream, falling back in to the ancient mound. Ivy consumed the shell.

Fashions changed, and soon the forgotten fantasias of princelings counted for little. In 1924 the Tower was deliberately and slowly razed to the ground, brick by brick. The turrets and battlements were reduced to charred rubble. The time of the Tower had passed, and the grassy mound of La Hougue Bie returned to the patient care of the ancients. In the words of Shelley, nothing beside remains. Only the little medieval chapel clung onto the summit like a tenacious prayer.

The dream vanished at daybreak, where the deep fields of Jersey slope down from all sides from the empty hill, cascading away towards the bright horizon. The sea still glimmers in the dawn light like a whispered, tantalising promise.

A much fuller version of Philippe D’Auvergne’s story is in Jersey: The Hidden Histories which is available from Amazon UK and WH Smith, Waterstones and the Harbour Gallery in Jersey.

Music: Chariots by Gavin Luke, courtesy of Epidemic Sound

The Glass Church is an astonishing, sublime masterpiece. But in the very beginning, in the place where the mill brook flowed into the open sand dunes of St Aubin’s Bay, there was just an empty field. It was on 17 February 1840 that this was purchased by the Rectors of St Lawrence and St Peter from Mr William George Le Gallais for the fine total of 62 pounds, 8 shillings and sixpence. They had purchased a vergée of land, bordered on the north by the Grande Route Militaire that runs from St Helier to St Aubin, for the express purpose of “building a chapel of ease, to celebrate divine worship following the rites of the Anglican church”.

So, in the Victorian age before the glass, before the masterpiece, there was just a nondescript chapel with a mixed school attached, to serve the burgeoning community of Millbrook.

The St Matthew’s school logbook, painstakingly completed by the incumbent head teacher for 26 years, is a treasure trove of insight into the hard times of a scrappy, struggling school, clinging to the skirts of its mother church, striving to educate generations in this harsh land where the sand dunes met the potato fields. Back in 1877, Her Majesty’s Inspector had observed, “the school appears to be destitute of organisation” and noted that, given the 57 boys amongst the children, “urinals are absolutely necessary”.

That year the school languished leagues behind its parochial counterparts. The parental fee contribution was means-tested, and seven out of ten pupils fell into the two lowest contribution brackets. Millbrook remained poor for decades. In August 1894, the Constable of St Lawrence, Edward Voisin, published a notice lambasting street begging from urchins, adding that “well-thinking people are invited to support all measures adopted for the suppression of this growing moral evil”.

So, as the logbook opened in 1894, eighty-eight little children were jammed like sardines into a dilapidated single room, nineteen feet square, which stood on the site of the old vicarage behind the church. We can picture this gaggle of Victorian infants, the ragged children of potato farmers, singing their designated School Songs for the year by rote: The Little Hero, Sweet and Low, Raindrops, Little Pilgrims and Christmas Carol. The repetitions drilled into the infants are preserved in time here like a message in a bottle sent from a long-dead world, setting the horizons of their rural Jersey lives: “The Cow, the apple, a horse, a farm-yard…”

Her Majesty’s Inspector’s reports reveal a dismal litany of academic failure. “Discipline, I am glad to say, is now satisfactory. I wish the results of the Examination were the same”. Arithmetic in the higher classes is pronounced “a complete failure”. The final judgement is damning: “Unless the whole School improved very much, I fear I shall have next year to pronounce it inefficient”. The inspector lamented “the disgracefully irregular attendance of the younger children”.

It was always a struggle to retain the attention of these unruly country children, especially during the peak planting season of February and the harvest time of May. “An increasing number are potato picking”, lamented an entry on May 18th, 1894. The surroundings did not inspire scholarly effort in any case. The link between intellectual, moral and physical squalor was always self-evident to the late Victorian mind. “The School Room must be made lighter… more ground must be procured”, argued the Inspector.

The work was done, and painstakingly and slowly, progress was at last being made at St Matthew’s. The academic tide finally began to turn and the 1899 report at last offered encouraging news. “Discipline and drill are good. Writing and Needlework are zealous”. The Church inspectors were even more effusive, praising the “intelligent and practical grasp of a full syllabus”. By the time J Edward Carter took over the headship that year, the school had swelled to an average of 142.5 pupils.

The world was changing, and the soporific peace of the Victorian age, was coming to an end. On October 15, 1900, the Head Teachers of Jersey held a conference with Inspector Burrows. “He laid a great deal of stress on the importance of drill – military drill – for boys”. Carter proposed that “a sergeant or other military man” be employed to teach drill, and his suggestion was enthusiastically endorsed.

Instructor Sergeant-Major Davis duly started training at the school on March 8, 1901. The shadow of the trenches, of the Great War, was just around the corner.

School conditions were still barely imaginable by modern standards. As the icy November of 1901 set in, the log-book entries are increasingly desperate. “We want a stove badly, for there is only one fireplace”. It was December 20 before an ancient, reconditioned stove was finally granted.

The Millbrook area remained an isolated farming community, with its residents critically dependent on its cash crop of potatoes. In June 1902, the Headmaster lamented, “the smell of manure in a field adjoining the school is so bad that I have been obliged to send the children home”. That autumn was also the end of a golden era for St Matthew’s School. Carter left clutching “a biscuit barrel in electroplate” as a leaving gift and a certain Mr D M Jones assumed the headship. The next ten years would witness St Matthew’s School suffer a vicious downward spiral of decline.

Rural poverty continued to blight performance, as evidenced in the ever more fleeting logbook records. In November 1907, a child over seven presented herself at the School. She had never darkened a school door in her life. For all of Jersey’s reputation as a healthy and balmy resort, the scourge of infectious disease also remained acute, with measles, a chicken pox epidemic, whooping cough and typhoid all recorded in 1907.

In that dark year of sickness, the Inspectors dealt a crippling blow to the School’s reputation with a thoroughly damning report. The old problems of unruly children and academic underachievement had clearly returned with a vengeance. “Discipline is lax in the upper division … the boys have little application and cannot be trusted to do any work by themselves”.

The horizon was darkening outside the school gates too. Great Power rivalry was now reaching its zenith, and by 1909 the Assistant Teacher was forced to spend two mornings a week on musketry practice.

The School continued to flounder, and on July 12, 1912, the Headmaster was formally served his notice. Jones protested the injustice, and offered to work on a nominal salary, but to no avail. His employment was terminated on 31 October and he lost his residence above the school on the same day. One of his last piquant entries in the logbook was on 26 August 1912: “Owing to hydroplane races, it was impossible to re-open school this morning”. Just beyond the schoolhouse, the very first aeroplane had landed in Jersey.

The 1912 report reveals a school sunk deep in decay. The Inspector appeared especially revolted by the scourge of graffiti “The doors are covered both inside and outside the School, with scribblings in pencil and ink. The classroom walls, the cloakroom, the offices, the seats of almost every available space also contain these scribblings”.

The writing was on the wall for the Victorian age, and time was also running out for the little school in the shadow of the chapel. In 1912, St Matthew’s underwent radical surgery, with all pupils over ten reallocated to First Tower School. As the dust cleared after the war, barely twenty-three scholars were still limping on at St Matthew’s Mixed School. The final logbook entry is on January 20, 1920. “School closed today for measles. It will not re-open”. The remaining pages are blank. The Victorian dream was over.

We will continue this tour of Jersey’s Lost Landmarks in the next newsletter.

You will find my books at retailers including Amazon, WH Smith on King St, Waterstones on Queen St and at the Harbour Gallery.

© Paul Darroch 2024

Music: Chariots by Gavin Luke, courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Welcome to another episode of the History Islands.

Today we meet Jersey’s Colonel John Le Couteur, who is attending the opening of the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, London, in 1851. The Channel Islands occupy a prominent place at the event.

The world is changing. Prince Albert, the scion of the Victorian age, puts it best – “the unity of mankind is within reach”. Technology drives his optimism. “The distances which separate the different nations and parts of the globe”, he declares, “are rapidly vanishing and we can traverse them with incredible ease; thought is communicated with the rapidity, and even the power, of lightning”. The telegraph, the penny post and the maritime arteries of empire are binding the world together, and Jersey is deeply enmeshed in the web. Indeed, the first pillar boxes in the British Isles will open in St Helier in 1852.

To celebrate the new era of global seaborne trade, the Prince Consort has called upon the world to showcase its greatest treasures in London. They call it the “Great Exhibition”.

Colonel John Le Couteur

1st May 1851

An emissary from the future has landed here at Hyde Park, and Queen Victoria is riding out to greet it. This crystal cathedral is an extraordinary glimpse of tomorrow: an astonishing ice palace, carved from nine hundred thousand square feet of glass, rising out of twenty-six acres of prime London parkland.

As a proud Jerseyman and aide-de-camp to Her Majesty, it is an honour to witness this day. I stand here at the opening of the 1851 Great Exhibition: a visionary project to showcase the finest works of human and natural creation. Prince Albert, its instigator and architect, says it will provide “a living picture of the point of development at which the whole of mankind has arrived”, and a worthy inspiration for further innovations. He has struck the mark.

I can scarcely imagine that six million people – almost a quarter of the population of Great Britain – will be mesmerised by the show before the year is out. Every nation has shipped its most exquisite works here, vying to showcase the most sublime craftsmanship, the fastest machinery, the most serene art. And Jersey and Guernsey, as the Crown’s oldest bailiwicks, occupy a prime position at the very heart of this magnificent new Crystal Palace.

As the Exhibition opens on May 1st, thirty thousand visitors cheer the young Queen. Secrecy has shrouded the great project for months; behind barriers, two thousand men and four steam-pumps have toiled away unseen. We could only imagine the marvels that they had conjured. Now the veil has at last been lifted, and the astonishing scale of the works are revealed to the world. The Exhibition occupies almost a million square feet, and the galleries alone stretch for almost a mile.

The immediate sense of light and space proves somewhat alarming, and many visitors are left dizzy, unsettled by the shock of the new. The official Catalogue will note a “sense of insecurity, arising from the apparent lightness of its supports as compared to the vastness of its dimensions”. Even the original great elms from the park have been incorporated within the glass, like strange arboreal specimens from the past, their arms brushing up against the soaring ceiling. At the Exhibition’s hub stands Osler’s Crystal Fountain – a translucent masterpiece shooting twenty-seven feet of water. It is built from four tons of pure crystalline glass, and the world has seen nothing like it.

Queen Victoria advances to declare the Exhibition open, to the strains of the National Anthem. I am lost in a sea of dainty bonnets and tall stovepipe hats; one onlooker amidst the tens of thousands overawed by this feast of treasures. After all the cheering, there is a profound silence, as we recite the choruses and prayers. Thirty thousand voices abruptly fall still, and I feel as if I am falling into a deep well.

The Archbishop of Canterbury concludes his address. As Handel’s angelic ‘Hallelujah’ chorus resounds throughout the cavernous palace, I have a strange sense that we stand present at the creation, at the start of something profoundly new. We have been granted a glimpse of the world to come. 

The Queen departs. As if the heroes of History itself have come to pay homage to the future, the ancient Duke of Wellington follows in her train. The poor old chap looks very feeble, but still he touchingly offers a supporting arm to his old comrade and sparring partner, Lord Anglesey.  The two grand old men survey the miracles unfolding all around them. Instead of cannon fire, they walk into a battery of spontaneous and heartfelt applause.

Truth be told, so many of us had feared the opposite - an angry republican mob, or worse. The shadow of the Hungry Forties is not so long past after all. Yet the worst transgression I witnessed today was from an enthusiastic royalist, who had shinnied up a high platform to catch a better view of the Queen. He was soon ushered down with an indulgent smile. Far from some towering Babel of confusion, this Exhibition seems the very model of decorum and order. The crowds swarm, like bees; bustling hither and thither, but in a sentient and ordered fashion, churning out the sweet honey of Progress. I have a season ticket to the building and will visit again and again.

As the weeks go by, I am delighted to note that the peace and order continues even on those days when tickets are cheapest. In fact, the gentry, shelling out their half-crowns for plum viewing times, are not nearly so polite as the ordinary Londoners.    

The exhibits are marshalled into four categories – Raw Materials, Machinery, Manufactures and Fine Arts. The world’s treasures have been corralled here. Yet, in my opinion, the industrial wonders surpass all. Electric telegraphs even enable us to summon carriages directly to the gates to meet us – no need to wait in line for a hansom cab!  

When I was a young boy, a galloping horse was our fastest carriage. Now we behold locomotives that can devour seventy-three miles in a single hour. Imagine my own joy and surprise as I tested a wonderful new quill that actually holds a reservoir of ink inside it – and it writes beautifully. No more need to scrabble around in inkwells after every second stroke! Mark my words: they call this device a “fountain pen”, and I believe it is going to make history.

Colonel Le Couteur was not the only visitor who left thunderstruck. The Great Exhibition seems to have sparked euphoria in many; a sheer intoxication with the power of technology. The great writer Charles Dickens himself visited twice but withdrew, overwhelmed by the dizzy kaleidoscope of sights. Yet for most, the house of wonders proved as hypnotising as the recent California gold rush. It was quite simply, in Colonel Le Couteur’s words, a “fairy palace”.

The Great Exhibition was the fruit of the vision of two men of unbounded and immense energy - Henry Cole, reputedly the inventor of the Christmas Card, and thirty-one-year-old Prince Albert himself. The objective was Utopian - to foster global peace, to beat swords into ploughshares. In the Channel Islands, poised on the front line of clashing kingdoms since time immemorial, the message was well received.

Colonel Le Couteur overcame his initial misgivings and decided to embrace the project. He would eventually visit the Great Exhibition no fewer than fifteen times. In his capacity as a scientist and founder of the Royal Jersey Horticultural and Agricultural Society, he personally exhibited over a hundred specimens of wheat from his gardens in St Brelade. Seven of them proudly bore the name “Jersey”. Mens’ and Ladies’ Committees in both Islands were established, and parish Constables even called house-to-house to seek funds.

After a short display in Gloucester Street in St Helier, the exhibits were shipped to London, with Henry Cole, the effervescent dynamo behind the Exhibition, personally escorting them to their stand. Jersey and Guernsey occupied an enviable position on the north side of the nave, next to Ceylon and India, near the Crystal Fountain at the centre of proceedings. The red saltires of Jersey hung majestically above the stand, with the leopards of both Bailiwicks prominently displayed on flags above.

The stand, built by George Clement Le Feuvre and William Stead, was designed to showcase the beauty of the Islands. It featured a plentiful array of traditional woollens. There were decorative shells from Herm and samples of Guernsey Blue granite, the stone used on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral.

 Jersey butter-making was also demonstrated daily during the Exhibition. Le Couteur recorded in his diaries that one churn produced 21 lbs 2 oz of butter in just two minutes, and another churned 28 lbs in just four and half. The latter portion he gifted as tribute to the Queen, and he personally called at the Palace the next day to ensure it had been safely received.

A Channel Islander provided one of the greatest technological marvels of the Exhibition. The crowds were mesmerised by Guernseyman Thomas de la Rue’s “Patent Envelope Machine”, which occupied its own special display. In a series of elegant and balletic mechanical moves, it cut, folded, gummed and forwarded thousands of envelopes an hour. The machinery was astoundingly productive, and as graceful as a swan, yet it was operated by just two boys.

One Jersey work of art was even honoured by an illustration in the official 1851 Great Exhibition catalogue. While lamenting that “the contributions from our fellow countrymen in the Channel Islands are comparatively few”, it praised “a CHEFFONIERE, or sideboard, manufactured by Mr G C LE FEUVRE, of Jersey; it is made of oak, a portion of the wood being the produce of the island; the designs in the compartments are worked in tapestry”. The emblems of England, Scotland and Ireland adorned embroidered panels, sewn by Mrs Le Feuvre.

The upper section of the cheffonière depicted King John, surrounded by rebellious barons and bishops, poised to sign the Magna Carta. One bishop wields a patriarchal cross; another bears a mitre. Alas, this section did not meet the Catalogue’s refined critical standards, so was not deemed worthy to be illustrated. Still, Jersey’s local woodworkers had gone head-to-head with the world’s pre-eminent artisans and had proved their worth.

The Great Exhibition shone like a supernova burning in the sky, drawing the world to it for a season. Yet the fairy palace that shimmered at daybreak would not last. This glittering temple of materialism finally closed its doors in October 1851. After six months, it was relocated to the heights of Sydenham in south-east London, where it would eventually burn to the ground, in a darker, sadder century. The charred remnants were swept aside, along with the hopes and dreams of the Victorian age. Only the name endures.

Yet the Exhibition was a signpost to the future, fulfilling the extraordinary prophetic vision that Prince Albert had decreed in his original speech: “The Exhibition of 1851 is to give us a true test and a living picture of the point of development at which the whole of mankind has arrived in this great task, and a new starting point from which all nations will be able to direct their further exertions”.

Albert would die tragically young, but he left us Albertopolis, the extraordinary cultural wealth of South Kensington’s museum quarter. His golden statue presides there to this day, clutching the Exhibition Catalogue. Inspired by his legacy, little Jersey would go on to hold the Channel Islands Great Exhibition in 1871 at the Victoria College Showground.

Yet as the Great Exhibition at Hyde Park closed its doors in 1851, the triumphant Le Feuvre and Stead faced a more prosaic dilemma on returning home to Jersey. They had incurred substantial expenses in the project; how best to recoup the funds? It was strictly against Exhibition rules to sell the display products, so they devised a lottery.

The first prize would be the ornate cheffonière itself, valued at the princely sum of £350. Alas, the States of Jersey took umbrage and intervened to scupper their plans. The Lottery was cancelled.  So, what became of this exquisite piece of craftsmanship, viewed by millions, and arguably one of the most celebrated works of art in Jersey’s history? It appeared to vanish without trace. They say it still stands somewhere in a grand English house, holding fast to its secrets, a story waiting to be told.

This story is an extract from my second book, Jersey: Secrets of the Sea, which is available on Amazon and in Waterstones, WH Smith, the Jersey Museum and the Harbour Gallery in Jersey. © Paul Darroch 2024.

Music: Chariots by Gavin Luke courtesy of Epidemic Sound. Images: Wikimedia Commons.

In later decades the area was repurposed as a bus station, the statue was moved beside the Grand Hotel, and the Esplanade’s shoreline advanced to conquer the bay. Today, with the advent of high-rise apartments and the new International Finance Centre, the view is utterly transformed from its Edwardian heyday.

A decade ago, I tried to capture its original atmosphere when I was writing about Charlie Chaplin’s visit to Jersey in Jersey: The Hidden Histories. He passed through in August 1912 to perform in Mumming Birds at the Opera House. I imagine Chaplin telling the story in his own words:

“I sleep late the next day. Pretty little Jersey feels a world away from the dazzling metropolitan theatres, or the drinking pits of south London. The air here is salt-heavy and beguiling, reminding me of one lost boyhood day, before the fall, when we joyously dipped our toes in the sea at Southend-on-Sea. I never saw the sea again as a child. St Helier is even more delightful, though for all its French airs it is branded with the hallmarks of British provincialism. A grand statue of Queen Victoria dominates the Weighbridge, her heavy shadow still hanging like an implacable burden over our age. Little engines trundle out from the nearby railway station, creeping westwards along the arc of the bay. The wooden warehouses that line the Esplanade are packed high in season with potatoes for export for the finest markets in London.

Tomorrow is the climax of the Battle of Flowers, a charming parade that since the late King Edward’s coronation has formed the mainstay of the summer season here. The weather has been rather foul in these parts of late, but we can hardly miss the chance to take part in such a celebration. At a loose end that afternoon, my cast members and I join the parade on Victoria Avenue, marching in unison as a theatre troupe to amuse the crowds of assorted onlookers and good-timers.

They are still putting the finishing touches to the Battle displays, great floral barges, lavish flower-sacrifices to the gods of fate and summer and chance. I prance past the floats in character, drolly reprising my role as the tipsy music hall buffoon. The people love it. I break out from the line and perform an impromptu performance. Staggering past, clowning and japing it up to high heaven, I draw titters and cheers from the audience. I drink in the applause.

Out of the corner of my eye, a man is cranking up one of those curious new-fangled marvels, a cinematographic camera for taking motion pictures. It am told he has come down from London for the purpose, at the behest of the Topical Gazette, and is grinding his machine for all its worth. Almost many people seem to be watching him as me. I love novelty, and this is my first time on film, but it seems to fit me like a glove. The crowds roar out their acclaim, and the sea air is fresh with the scent of opportunity.

My little solo escapade is coming to an end. I bow jauntily and revel in the cheers. Just as I saunter back into the mêlée, I spy a little boy, his face dirty and smudged, gazing at me with pure adoration. I look back at him and see myself. He is a grimy street urchin, dirty but clinging to his pride, entranced by the show. The boy calls out to a distant mother, “Oh mamma, why has he gone away? I did want to see the funny man again?” His laughter burns in my ears like a promise.

In that moment, I begin to understand. This is the shape of things to come. The cine-camera whirrs and turns, spinning out my future. Suddenly the sun breaks in through the cloud bank high over St Aubin’s Bay, and hangs above the horizon like a glorious sign. The 1912 Battle of Flowers glides on. The little lost boy turns and smiles at me for one last time, before he is swallowed up by the carnival. I slip back into the warm embrace of the parade, my ears ringing with his laughter, dancing on towards tomorrow”.

You might be interested to know that Discover Britain magazine has a fantastic Channel Islands special edition out now (August/September 2024 edition, issue 241). It includes a contribution from me on Jersey’s culture and identity. The magazine is available across the UK and Channel Islands.

~ Paul Darroch

Finally, the music in the video is “Sunset Drive” by Future Joust, courtesy of Epidemic Sound. This felt like a very appropriate 1980s-style synth soundtrack for a spot of time travel!

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Early Hollywood left an indelible mark on those in its orbit, far deeper than the noxious mercury vapours from the Cooper-Hewitt lamps that stained even Elinor’s red hair a violent purple. The allure of the West Coast sucked in a swarm of writers and swindlers, moneymen and showgirls, tycoons on the make, hunters and their prey. This was a gold rush as fatal and alluring as the mad old days of 1849; the spell of California promising untold wealth to the ferociously ambitious with nothing to lose but their souls.

The paranoia and fearful undercurrents of Hollywood gradually corroded Elinor’s frail peace of mind. Gradually Elinor Glyn, ever attuned to the esoteric, believed that the entire West Coast was caught in the grip of an ancient curse. The first symptoms she noted, that became immediately evident upon arrival in Hollywood, were a “sense of exaggerated self-importance and self-centredness”. The next stage, to which she pleaded guilty, was a sudden and consuming obsession with making money. She herself realised she had become infected with the virus. The final and fatal stage, Elinor argued, was utter moral bankruptcy.

Hollywood indeed consumed so many of its children. Morphine, moonshine and mistresses flourished in the hothouse atmosphere of the West Coast. Was Elinor simply blinded by the Klieg lights, those dazzling studio arc lamps that burned the eyes of many a star? Elinor already suspected she had drunk a little too deeply of the mad, befuddling wine of celebrity, long before she ever set sail on a yacht called the Oneida, on a tragic voyage that would enter into the legends of Hollywood noir.

Yet in 1927 she had one magical swansong to bestow, the movie ‘It’. Starring the irrepressible Clara Bow, this was Elinor Glyn’s masterpiece. The concept of the “It Girl” – someone blessed with innate, effortless charm and magnetism – has since become part of the English language.

Bow was an inspired piece of casting; a devastatingly charismatic young woman who seemed utterly modern in her self-reliance and sheer verve. The movie’s sassy star helped It make a million dollars in profit, and sealed Elinor’s reputation in Hollywood. The “It Girl”, as much as the Charleston dance or the Flapper, became a cultural phenomenon and sign of the times.

“It” had always been the animating spirit of all of Elinor’s romances, a poetic short hand for a magnetic allure and beguiling appeal that transcended the purely physical. The Roaring Twenties were made for the It Girls. This was the Jazz Age, an era of effortless style, easy money and easier morals, and Elinor Glyn captured its heart.

Yet by now Elinor herself was playing another role, of victim. It was famously said that she was never offered a contract she wouldn’t sign. She foolishly allowed herself to be seduced by a succession of charming and financially manipulative young men. Bleeding money, she retreated from the West Coast.

She attempted to recreate her magic in England; but far from the technical mastery of Hollywood, her motion pictures proved dismal failures. Virtually bankrupt and alone, she was compelled to write her engaging and intimate autobiography, Romantic Adventure, to stave off the renewed threat of destitution. Her beautiful dream was over.

In the end, there was just one more pilgrimage Elinor Glyn could make. In February 1939, this elderly woman returned to Jersey, the Island of her birth, for the first time in over fifty long years. It was a triumphant homecoming. Great parties were held in her honour; the Bailiff presented her with the Great Seal of the Island. Elinor toured her old haunts; privately cherishing the glimpse of the parapet where she had once shared her first kiss with an Eton boy.

The Jersey Evening Post, on 10th February 1939, prominently reported the talk that Elinor Glyn delivered to the Rotary Club in the Halkett Hotel next to Royal Square. She charmed the audience with her childhood memories of the Island. She fondly recalled falling asleep on the footstall as a little child during tedious sermons at St Mark’s Church. She explained how strangely familiar it felt, to climb the staircase at Government House. Fifty years had merely been the blink of an eye. That was the place where she sneaked under a table with her sister and a friend to catch a glimpse of the impossibly glamorous Lillie Langtry. A giggle gave them away; but the divine Mrs. Langtry promised to say nothing, and even ordered some supper for the little girls. Elinor’s homecoming speech ended in hearty applause.

Elinor’s public stance was one of pride and gratitude to the Island of her birth. Privately, she found the return visit profoundly disturbing. She felt standards had slipped; Government House seemed a shadow of its former eminence. The Jersey of her childhood had grown cramped and small, full, she wrote of “bad, petty and envious vibrations”. St Helier now seemed a cramped and diminished place compared to the exhilarating space and seductive vistas of California. The curse of the West Coast had left an indelible mark.

Elinor searched in vain for the house where she was born, but it had long gone. Everything had changed for the worse; her childhood world had irredeemably fled. She appreciated the flowers and kindness from her native Island, but in the end parted with a sad and tormented farewell. She wrote privately: “I remember now feeling on the boat in 1888 when we finally left, the prison doors were opening at last…. I never wish to go back again”.

She never did. As Nazi bombs pummelled London and her birthplace fell into the shadow of the Occupation, Elinor Glyn gradually slipped away. Some of her very last letters were to William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies, sent from battered, blacked-out London and winging far away to their glittering Californian palace at San Simeon. Elinor fell into the shadow of her own memories.

Elinor Glyn

London, September 1942

“We live as we dream, alone”. Every night the black mountain-tides of Jersey are raging in my nightmares, flooding towards me, and seeking to drag me under. I am gasping for breath, fighting for life, so I wake. Even as the night terrors fade, I listen to the deadly symphony of the small hours; the spine-tingling wail of the air raid sirens and the dull thud of the German bombs.

The sky is on fire here every night. I am almost bed-ridden, bent double in a silken prison. Still, I often press my face to the window and spy the curtains of flame sweeping westward across the heart of the city. London is a like a bloodied boxer, slugged hard to the ground, losing a tooth or an eye, but fighting back with fury against the darkness. I am so proud. I shall not yield either, so my gas mask remains neatly boxed under the dressing table. I simply lie on my bed, listening to the murderous thunder, waiting to see if I will suddenly burn.

At first, they wanted to evacuate me to the country, and while the raids were at their fiercest, I did retreat to my old house at Miskin Manor. Yet I could not stay, for every room was shrieking with memories. I could no longer face the deathly corridor where my mother once paced like a wizened ghost, a pale old lady with cap and cane who would not let me be. I cannot escape her, though, for in these latter days, I have become her. The royal romances, the tiger skins and seductive vistas of Hollywood have all led here, to this lonely room full of memories.

They say lately that the news is better; the fortunes of war are turning. The radio tells of vast, hellish battles, of thousands of tanks colliding and clashing on the great Russian plains. I drift away through the unruly continents of my own mind. I remember those ice-draped palaces of Moscow, the golden troikas gliding like swans across the snowfields. I remember the feasts, the fabulous balls, the revels of the old regime. Those palaces burned long ago, under a red star. My hosts were shot at dawn.

I sometimes feel that all the beauty in the world has fled. At the height of my fame, I travelled to Rawhide, Nevada, to dine with the goldminers, the finest nobles of the earth. It was one of the proudest moments of my life as I held court with those decent, honest men. One of those gallant gentlemen even rode ninety miles across the desert, just to present me with a bunch of yellow daisies. Today that gold-rush town has been swallowed up by the earth, the empty schools and hotels looming in the swirling dust. I recall the eerie lines from Shelley I read so long ago in the library at Richelieu in Jersey: Nothing beside remains.

The California Curse has devoured me from within. For a fleeting, capricious moment, I stood at the pinnacle of Hollywood, as Clara Bow wowed the world and my films grossed a million dollars apiece. For a time, I even believed I could simply speak riches into the world as if by a golden spell. Now silent films are history, an embarrassment. All my wealth has seeped away like water, like dear old Clayton’s before me, flowing back to the silent places of the earth.

This is how it was always going to end. I think of Lucy, my beautiful, late sister. I think of her standing on the gangway to the Titanic, blissfully unaware of what was to come, never knowing the voyage that lay ahead. I will be joining her soon on her final journey.

I am weary of it all now, locked in this gilded cage, too exhausted to reveal my face in the world again. The detritus of my life is scattered all around me, in golden caskets crammed with memories. The silk canopy of my bed, the silver-heart shaped mirror on my dressing table; these are trinkets and jewels from a half-forgotten world. I sent a last letter to Marion Davies in Hollywood yesterday, and my shaking hands could barely grasp the pencil to shape each letter. After so long, even my words are being stolen from me.

No matter, for all my stories are told. All the weddings are done, the confetti spilt, and the heroes are living happily ever after, or lying in coffins from the wars. I hear all their voices crowding in my dreams, a cacophony of beauty and life, like radio broadcasts from a distant star. The tiger skin is packed away, forgotten, waiting for another age. Romance is my lodestar, but now the dream is done.

Far above my silken shroud, the searchlights scour the sky, bringing false dawn, reminding me of the distress flares I once saw above a sinking ship, the steamship to Jersey, on a barren rock so long ago. I am confused and befuddled, my spirit broken. I glance for a last time into the silver mirror, in the clear moonlight.

The face of the old, withered woman is gone. Staring back are the red tresses and shining green eyes of a little shipwrecked girl, perched on that rocky ledge, waiting for the waves to come. The waters are lapping at her feet now, the storm tide is roaring in, and soon she will slip away into the night.

This extract is taken from Jersey: Secrets of the Sea, available on Amazon and in all good Jersey bookstores. The music is Chariots by Gavin Luke, courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Welcome to another episode of The History Islands! Elinor Glyn has now arrived in Hollywood, at the dawn of its golden age. We follow her story.

The Hollywood Hotel

Los Angeles, California

1925

We are present at the creation. In California in the beginning, there must have been an Edenic paradise, of orange groves and eternal sunshine. This was a world of old Spanish missions, of burning heat on adobe walls. Time moved slowly here, unfolding languidly on the sundials, until one day, it started to accelerate into the future.

First men came west for God, then for gold. Now a new breed of technical pioneers has colonised the Promised Land, in search of the aura of pure clear light. Dusty farms have become studios. The merciless Californian sun is the ideal medium for these magicians, as they conjure up ghosts on their magic lanterns. We came here to consult with these wizards of the coast. We checked into an obscure and somewhat ramshackle country roadhouse, the Hollywood Hotel, which has suddenly become deluged with celebrities. The landlady is now a good friend of mine.

Jesse Lasky, the studio supremo, had invited us over. Those early motion pictures were marvellous, but their style was raw and untutored. So, Jesse summoned a brace of established writers, to travel over from old Europe and embrace the uncharted horizons of Hollywood. Most of them failed to grasp the fluid new visual medium of the cinema; and were soon sent packing. Even the great Somerset Maugham lasted only a week here.  I took to it like a duck to water.

California is the ultimate reversal. Sunlight is burning away the cloying Jersey fog of my past, scourging and renewing me from within. In England they dismissed me as a mere scribbler, a purveyor of pot-boilers; over here the sheer popularity of my books is validation enough. In Jersey as a child, they pitied and scorned my unconventional looks; remember that threat of the leaden comb, and all those whispered asides? Here, they adore me. Gloria Swanson loves my striking red hair and my theatrical poise; I receive daily compliments about my piercing green eyes.

There is a new world here, and it is in the process of being born. They are busy ploughing boulevards, excavating great highways across empty scrubland and new roads along twisting canyons.  They are planting young palm trees outside, in neat rows along the boulevards. Beverly Hills often seems like a dusty building site, with estates of grand houses springing up overnight like mushrooms. The sidewalks vanish into empty fields, but we know those fields will soon be filled. We perch here above a thousand miles of azure ocean, where the brown hills dissolve into pure clear light. This is where the great trek west ended, where the restless American frontier reached its final destination. I am living in this promised land.

 My first major cinematic breakthrough was Beyond the Rocks, which starred Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino. Now I glide through the opulent salons of William Randolph Hearst. I waltz at parties with Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, the golden couple of the silent movies. It is as if I am a house guest at a beautiful and shining ball.  

Weekends are spent unwinding and playing charades with Charles Chaplin. He is such a riot! Can you believe this is the lost boy whose hair was doused in iodine in the Hanwell workhouse? He was an unknown theatre clown, when he was captured on film for the first time in my beautiful home Island of Jersey. Now, by a dazzling series of miracles, this wonderful human being has ended up as the most famous man in the world.

We’ve had such tremendous fun together, and one fine morning we even eloped down to Mexico! He’d just married young Lita Grey, and after a madcap road trip, we all ended up in a decrepit double-bedded shack in a tiny Mexican village!  Charles and Lita shared a bed while I curled up in a makeshift cot in the corner. We were just drifting off to sleep when Charles, with impeccable comic timing, intoned in a sepulchral voice: “My God! Think of Charlie Chaplin and Elinor Glyn in bed together in the wilds of Mexico”. He then ad-libbed some hilarious press reports of the incident!

It is a beautiful life; a fairy tale as poetic as any of the endings to my novels. I wake every morning, and the blazing sun warms my bones. My past in Jersey and England has receded to the form of a distant, troubling dream. The longer I am here, the further away I feel. It is a blissful thought. Yet somehow, far beneath the waterline, I sense that my soul is already beginning to fray.

To be continued….

This story is extracted from Jersey: Secrets of The Sea which is available from Waterstones and WH Smith in Jersey and of course Amazon.

Lucy and her sister Elinor grew into a pair of socially ambitious and utterly self-assured young women. Lucy, later Lady Duff-Gordon, eventually became a pioneering couturier with her own fashion house, Lucile Ltd. She would go on to survive the icy wreckage of the Titanic disaster.

Elinor’s own life was lived in a whirlwind of energy. She was determined to escape the “quaint and faintly pathetic little Island” of her birth. After a dizzying spell in Paris, she married Clayton Glyn, a wealthy Essex landowner and country squire. He provided her with a ready-made place amidst the landed elite of Victorian England, in a world of sumptuous country house soirées and shooting parties.

Yet within weeks of the wedding, her romantic dreams were already being curtailed by his dour country practicality. Elinor, full of the joys of spring, longed to stroll through a beautiful bluebell wood in the estate, but she was strictly denied entry lest she disturb the pheasants. Soon enough, Clayton’s affection towards his young wife was cooling, and the relationship drifted into a loveless marriage of convenience.

Elinor nonetheless produced two girls, Margot and Juliet. Unbeknownst to her, the prospect of lacking a male heir sent her husband into a downward spiral of depression. Immediately after the birth of his second daughter, Clayton fled to Monte Carlo and burned the colossal sum of ten thousand pounds on the roulette wheel. In his eyes, without a male heir, there was no longer any point in passing a penny onto the next generation; everything must go. The family fortune was permanently destroyed in that single night of madness.

Frustrated by her husband’s waning affection, Elinor’s creative urges found another outlet. She penned a light-hearted portrait of fashionable society, entitled The Visits of Elizabeth. It was an immediate sensation.  In an age where women were still denied the vote, she personally negotiated the same terms as Rudyard Kipling, the leading author of the day. Her impressive advance for her second novel was £500, fortified by 25% royalties; the cash sum alone could buy a London townhouse.

Long ago, as a young girl, Elinor had seen the legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt play in Theodora, in Paris. Her majesty, her allure and her astonishing personal magnetism had left an indelible impact. The idea suddenly occurred to her – what would happen if such an incredible, fierce woman fell in love with a dashing young English gentleman? This conceit formed the basis of Three Weeks, the novel that would seal Elinor’s notoriety and make her fortune.

The plot was hardly Shakespearean. A dashing and handsome young man, fresh out of Oxford, falls under the allure of a sophisticated older lady. She turns out to be a Balkan queen whose life is in danger, and for three weeks they enjoy a passionate love affair. It was hardly its language that made Three Weeks an immediate sensation. The writing was effulgent and overblown, as the era demanded, and the content was tame even by contemporary music hall standards. In Edwardian eyes, the book’s scandalous power arose from the shocking social assumptions in the novel. In this romance, the powerful woman is in control – she is the hunter.

Three Weeks was an immediate sensation upon its publication in 1907. Within nine years it had already sold nearly two million copies in Great Britain, the Empire and America alone. Eventually it would sell many more. It was translated into virtually every European language. The tiger skin the lovers reclined on became a favourite cliché of the age.

Elinor toured the world, coasting the wave of fame. Just before her forty-third birthday, she set sail for America, with 60 pairs of high-heeled shoes neatly packed. The New York press loved her, and she took tea with a literary giant, the elderly and white-haired Mark Twain. She then toured the Wild West, and on her visit to Rawhide, Nevada, she was serenaded by hundreds of gold miners. She was impressed by “nature’s gentlemen” and for the first time moved beyond the straitjacket of her Victorian upbringing, realising the true gentility was not dependent on social rank.  Yet the surge of fame was already turning her head. Elinor was falling increasingly under the spell of esoteric philosophy, believing she could conjure up waterfalls of wealth purely by the power of intention.

Her escapades continued to provide fertile material for her novels. One expedition took her deep into the heart of Imperial Russia, into the feverish, decadent banquets that the nobles enjoyed in their magnificent palaces. Her hosts cautioned her to avert her eyes as starving peasants wandered past barefoot in the snow.  Elinor cavorted in golden troikas through snowstorms, and toured the Winter Palace, where she solemnly declared herself to be the reincarnation of Catherine the Great.

Yet behind the glorious illusion, things were falling apart. Her husband was dying, his purse empty and his liver shredded. She was forced to concoct a mediocre novel in eighteen days just to stave off his creditors. Her own great and passionate infidelity, with Lord Curzon, the former Viceroy of India, limped on without commitment or resolution. She only learned their ten-year love affair was over when she read in The Times that he was engaged to another woman. It was a nasty blow for the self-styled queen of romance.

Elinor escaped to Paris, scoffing lobster, raspberries and cream every day at the Ritz. Then came another terrible, sudden shock. German armies were on the march. In August 1914, Europe tumbled into the abyss, and romantic love was shredded to death on the barbed wire of Somme. In the poignant words of Larkin, “Never such innocence again”. 

The war proved another fruitful canvas for Elinor; she raced to report news from the front line and did menial voluntary work in London. Yet as the dust settled across a scarred and bloodied Europe, what did the future hold? Where could an ageing Romantic, approaching her sixtieth birthday, turn? The answer was simple: to go West. Hollywood was calling.

This story is adapted from Jersey: Secrets of the Sea, which is available on Amazon UK and in a range of Jersey bookshops.

Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound (Chariots by Gavin Luke).

© Paul Darroch 2024. The History Islands newsletter and website are produced by Open Page Learning Ltd which is registered with the Jersey Office of the Information Commissioner (JOIC) registration number 70929.

The odds were stacked against them as they began their journeys, but through fierce determination, both girls would leave their mark on the twentieth century. Their paths would eventually take them from that dreary house on Colomberie to the glittering catwalks of New York and the sun-drenched boulevards of Hollywood respectively. But all that would be in the century yet to come.

Wind the clock back, long before the cascade of fame and wealth, and you will just find two frightened little girls, on a black steamship, heading home in the night. Winter has fallen hard, and a shroud of fog cloaks the Channel as the overnight ferry trundles down from Southampton to St Helier. The hours of the night have dragged on, and landfall cannot be long. It has been an uneventful voyage so far, but history has other plans.

Elinor Sutherland

SS Havre, en route to the Channel Islands

Platte Boue Rocks

16 February 1875

Like many a marriage, the ship broke without warning. It was a violent, rapid sundering, a splitting of shinbone and calf bone as the old vessel skewered itself fatally onto the rock. We were all jolted awake by the impact, as if the sea and earth had fallen in beneath us. The loud reverberations juddered and screeched through our cabin, like the bellow of a harpooned whale.

I was a wilful, wayward girl of ten on the day we collided with the rocks. We were on our way back home to Jersey, back to my island prison. My desperate mother had taken me with my elder sister Lucy for a week’s parole in London. The trip was a disappointment. As a child, I had dreamed of a fairy-tale city of hale and hearty burghers, of noble streets paved with gold. The vicious squalor of London told a different story. Everything there was choked in black; soot-flakes swirled around us as we left in the black winter fog.

Our carriage rattled back down to Waterloo, whisking us past the fetid rookeries of Seven Dials. Desperation lurked here, in the broken palms of the street beggars, in the sad eyes of the flower-girls plying their trade on every corner. Nothing good could remain here unsullied. Nothing beautiful would endure. Still, for a precious few days we were at least free from the tyranny of our step-father. The days fled. Then from Southampton Docks, we slipped back onto the dismal packet steamer that would ferry us safely back home.

Many a slip betwixt cup and lip. Eventually the ship’s lacerating death-rattle subsided, replaced by a low, resigned growl. The hull had breached. Within seconds, a violent surge of black water spilled right through the cabins, breaking into our quarters like a thief. Sheer instinct took over. My mother roughly pushed us up the gangway ladder, half-dressed, out of the suffocating womb of the boat onto the icy deck. I wheezed and rasped my cries, my breath raw. The winter spell had broken.

Women shrieked in their nightclothes in the freezing February morning, some nursing whimpering babies to their breasts. I heard one of the crew agitatedly shout that the engine room had already flooded. The ship was lost. Then panic broke out. In the half-darkness, I saw a couple of ferret-like men, rifling through other passengers’ abandoned bags, brazenly seizing the opportunity to steal and pilfer. In the chaos, a rich man’s purse spilled open, and a shimmer of half-sovereigns and silver sixpences cascaded across the deck. Slowly, as if in a dream, I watched his coins slip away into the oblivion of the black and angry sea. It scarcely mattered in our strange new world, for everything had changed.

Scuffles were now breaking out on deck. Some young militia boys, whose discipline had fled at the first glimpse of terror, had barged their way onto one of the lifeboats. A whiskered old colonel, his neck-veins bulging with fury, was doing his level best to stop them. “Women and children first”, he yelled, “or you will face the consequences!”. Even in the midst of this chaos, people stared, and despite the darkness, their glances could fell trees. Chastened and publicly humiliated, the soldier-boys sullenly backed down and let us through. The ship’s officers, burly men in stovepipe hats and greatcoats, ushered us down into the wooden lifeboat. The deck had become a rising alp, with the jagged angle of a broken bone. We struggled to steady ourselves on the slanting timbers, but Mother did not let go, and our lifeboat was winched down into the sea.

We slipped away from the catastrophe, bearing across half a mile of seething, turbulent water as the lights of the sinking ship faded away behind us. As we breached the central channel of the Russel, thin curtains of saltwater broke over us. A baby wailed at the shock.

I was physically numb. The cocoon of my life had burst open. My empty life in Jersey; my bullying stepfather, the suffocating provincial routines of the governesses and formal dinners, had just been blown apart with the force of a hurricane. A secret part of me exulted in the ravenous eye of the storm, at the rage of Fate and Fury, and the breath-taking truth that the dice had rolled, and I could not control where they would land.

My fellow passengers were silent and dressed in black, like wax effigies being hauled back to the museum of history. I fancied romantically that the gods of the red granite, the drowned kingdoms of the Channel, had come to claim us for their own, and throw dice for our souls. I felt somehow through the turbulent, lashing waves, a strange sense that all that had happened and could ever happen was flying away from me, lost in the scudding seas, a forgotten illusion.

I resolved to show no emotion. My grandmother, long ago back in icy Canada, had told me to me brave, just as our ancestors had faced the guillotine with equanimity in the Place de la Révolution. To be poised and dignified on the inevitable steps to the scaffold; that was all. The rest was in the hands of history.

Behind us, a brilliant distress flare shot up from the wreck, dancing like an angel in the night before falling to earth. It was a sublime sight, as beautiful as the fireworks display over Elizabeth Castle. A moment’s false sunshine briefly enveloped our little lifeboat; revealing the snivelling children, the huddled passengers, our pilot lighting a defiant cheroot in the face of imminent death. Then the last of the bright colour drained from the skies, and the shroud of grey mist descended again.

We plunged away through the cauldron of the channel, a witch’s sea-fog swirling around us and masking everything from our sight. Eventually the shipmaster moored us with great difficulty on a vicious, exposed shelf of rock and we hauled ourselves out. Drenched and shivering, we huddled like puffins on the brine-soaked ledge. The ‘Grand Amfroque’ the sailors called it, but it seemed doomed ground; without a blade of grass. We were outcasts, perched on a crossroads between this world and the next, waiting to find out which way we would go. The relentless incoming tide would soon answer that question.

As the tides rose, the ship slowly drowned, like an exhausted fly struggling in vain against the side of a bell jar. Baggage began to float away from it, parcels and worldly goods floating on the amber tide. A smattering of letters drifted past, Penny Reds in the sea, lost messages, their fastidious copperplate ink smeared away by the salt tide, declarations of love or income tax demands that would never reach their final destinations.

Perhaps this little girl of blazing red hair, of green gemstone eyes, would also be lost forever, my words swirling beneath the waves. The waters would close, as if I had never been. The caged songbird would drown. I could hear the vicar’s solemn epitaph now. He had once thrown me a withering, sorry glance, and muttered disapprovingly to my mother that “‘twas such a pity she did not have Lucy’s hair”. In his eyes, my unruly flame-red tresses were the mark of Cain. Mother often threatened to use a leaden comb to make my curly locks darker, though knowing my temper she never dared.

Perched here in the numbing cold, my thoughts wandered back to home. My prison was a rented house called Richelieu; in the old French, they say this means a home of a wealthy person. My stepfather would rage for hours, the curses of an embittered old man. My young, devoted mother had remarried for duty and was soon cursed with the yoke of this petty despot. He was a rich miser, whom my mother had to beg for five pounds a year to feed his children and fund a home. He whiled away his days playing backgammon while a series of iron governesses tried and failed to tame us.

Only in my imagination would I soar, feasting on a chained library of gods and heroes, princes and thieves. There was no book step in the library, but I would grab whatever novels or poetry lay within my arm’s reach, from Don Quixote to the diaries of Pepys. I drifted off during the tedious brimstone sermons at St Mark’s Church. Secretly at night, I prayed to Zeus and Athena, to the pantheon of joyful and playful gods and goddesses. They promised sweet escape from this sour and petty Island, imprisoned in its iron corset of formality. I would often pity those tethered Jersey cows, beautiful creatures bound by rope, forbidden to stray, forced to feed again and again on one tiny patch of barren grass. Their ribcages poked out from their lean carcasses. I looked deeply into their sad doe-eyes and saw myself.

Above all, I dreaded the violence of the waters that swirled around my island prison. Every night I dreamed of ten-foot waves, of rising seas, of crawling to escape the incoming flood. I dreaded the secret caves at Plémont, where the capricious turn of the tide could seal you in and drag you under. Now the winter waves were surging in over the rock ledge, and my worst fears had become flesh.

Hanging here on the frozen rock, the borders of the past and future had merged, as surely as the heavy fog that blurred the boundaries of land and sea. The sullen, brutal gods were angry, and had passed final judgment. I felt no urge to escape, but simply a strange and passive acceptance of Fate. The pitiless seagulls circled high above us, but their unearthly and meaningless cries were strangely comforting. We could scramble no higher now, and the waves were already lapping at our feet. Soon the tides would claim us, and we would surely and inevitably drown.

All the frivolous Greek gods of my library at Richelieu had fled. I turned in the last back to the words my grandmother had taught me. I murmured beneath my breath a final prayer, over and over, “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look upon a little child”. I shivered and closed my eyes.

A foghorn broke into my head. It seems that some quarrymen had noticed the flare, from the north coast of Guernsey, where they were mining rich seams of blue granite to build the new monuments of London. A ramshackle armada of schooners and fishing dinghies had been despatched from St Peter Port. I watched as if through a wall of glass as the burly sailors drew close. In the end, all hands were saved.

I often remember the rescue ship, churning through the sea-fog, a real peasouper, as stale and dank as the London smog we had left behind. We pitched and bucked on the treacherous seas, but we had felt the fury of the ocean, and lived. Far beyond and unseen, the salvage crew departed, and the packet steamer fell at last down to the Channel seabed, nestling in the drowned hunting grounds of our ancestors.

The Jersey newspapers dutifully screamed the story of the heroic SS Havre rescue, and quickly forgot. We could not, for we were utterly changed. Life had been revealed to us as a brief and precious adventure, to be seized and devoured. We petulant children were no longer content to be passive prisoners of Fate and social convention. We grew into forceful and ambitious young women, determined to make the future yield to our will. The world turned and our step-father died. Set free from their prison, these caged birds flew.

Since that day, I have always feared and avoided the sea. I still dream every night of the vicious spring tide at La Collette, that Jersey headland where the rocks splinter and tumble down like glass into the churning bay. I am always scrambling up, outrunning my fate, heading for higher ground.

They say history repeats itself, and often has a sting in the tail. A day was coming soon when my beautiful, brave sister Lucy, at the height of her fame and wealth in 1912, would board another doomed ship, this one bound for New York. It was a mammoth and splendid vessel, the very pride of the White Star Line. But I imagine you already know the name.

This story is taken from Jersey: Secrets of the Sea, which is available on Amazon and in WH Smith, Waterstones and the Harbour Gallery in Jersey.

© Paul Darroch 2024. The History Islands newsletter and website are produced by Open Page Learning Ltd which is registered with the Jersey Office of the Information Commissioner (JOIC) registration number 70929.

Music credits - Chariots by Gavin Luke. Courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

The hunger for more proves to be the death of men: that was the not-so-hidden message of many a Renaissance tragedy. In an age of the untamed printing press, when popular reformations and revolutions spread like wildfire, human greed was a subversive force. The Governors of Jersey required all of Her Majesty’s subjects to stay within the shackles of their ordained rank, to preserve the brittle social order of the realm. 

This morality tale is based on a story first published by William Creed on March 22, 1595. It was first published in London, for a metropolitan audience, and despite its specific setting in the bay of Grouville, its Jersey origins are unclear. We do not know if the author, like Shakespeare himself, had simply appropriated an exotic locale for dramatic effect. Alternatively, this may have been a genuine Jersey sea story that found an audience in England’s capital, at the zenith of Queen Elizabeth’s seafaring age.

Grouville Bay, Jersey, Summer 1594

The wind dropped like a stone. Then the fires of hell burst down over Grouville Bay. Dusk was falling fast, a gathering gloom, and the last fishing boat was hauling in its nets for the night. They were almost empty; it had been a foul catch. The boat masters Dansie and Doughton were barking at their sullen crew, when suddenly their jaws dropped, and they whimpered like puppies.

A dragon’s flame was searing across the heavens, a terrifying surge of clean electric blue. The blackened horizon shone brightly for one moment, just like the sun before an eclipse. The sea fizzled with a strong acrid smell of burning. The shipmen fell to their knees in terror. Then the sky collapsed into darkness.

Something was stirring high above the bay. A silent armada was rising over the horizon, but it bore no sails. A flotilla of spheres glowed like lanterns in the sky, with an eerie violet light, pulsing with unearthly energy. They hung there like beautiful, fearsome omens.

Yet all the rest of the world remained still, as if frozen in a dream. Smoke still spilled up from the great grey keep on the heights of Gorey, that mailed fist jutting out towards the Norman coast. The waves continued to lap against the gentle Grouville shore, as gentle as a mother’s caress. The beach glistened brightly in the indigo light.

“The fire of Saint Elmo!”, whispered the master in awe. Dansie and Doughton were rough men, who spent their days scouring the Duke’s seas for fat eels. Dansie was a ruinous peacock of a man, a cocktail of spite and pride. Doughton was a silent, sturdy bully, who spoke best with his fists. The boat’s two crewmen, who silently worked the nets like convicts, and sweated every day to make their masters rich, despised them both. 

The four fishermen stared at the St Elmo’s fire, and then at each other; each one poised somewhere between terror and exultation, fear and astonishment. Then Dansie’s twisted face broke into a rare smile, revealing a brace of rotten teeth, some repaired with soft gold.  He declared: “This is a sign of good fortune, boys. Head for the old wreck at once - and haul the nets in afresh”.

At those words, the ghost-lights fled.  Then the winds rose, and a storm crashed in, and firecrackers of lightning whipped over the water. The waves were high, and the fishing boat lurched in the storm. Yet the crewmen, drenched and seething with resentment, sailed out one last time, and cast the net.

The nets had torn. The first one was ripped open like a goose at Yuletide. The men eventually hauled the second net in, sweating like oxen, but a great deadweight was holding them back. Their muscles bulged at the exertion, but at last they landed their cargo on the shore. Dansie sauntered over to survey his prize.

At first, draped with tentacles of sea-weed, the nature of this wreck was hard to decipher. Yet even in twilight, and beneath a crust of rust, this catch glimmered. It was a heavy object, of weighty metal. Dansie’s heart clammed up in his chest and the blood drained from his face. This was made of clean, beaten gold. It was the throne of a fallen king.  

The men gasped. They had all heard tell of Plato’s Atlantis, and seen the tree-stumps at low tides that ringed the coasts of Jersey. Great kings must have ruled here once, giant men in ancient forests before the Flood drowned the world. Before them lay the astonishing proof.

A miracle had been dragged ashore. Upon closer inspection, the golden throne was carved in the form of a tree, with a hundred intertwined branches rising from the heart-root of the royal bloodline. Yet further up the seat, the leaves became thorns, and the branches had holes and embossed seals, ending in spikes and razor-ridges. Was this an instrument of power or torture, or perhaps both? What beauty had this throne witnessed, and what cruelty?  

It mattered not. This treasure could buy a castle; a brace of manor houses; a whole Island. So Dansie and Doughton stepped aside to confer, as thick as thieves. Dansie, a flicker of fear rippling across his soft neck, urged caution: “Let us sell this treasure and give the men a hundred pounds apiece. They know our secret; let us buy their silence”. Yet Doughton was unyielding as a boulder: “These men deserve nothing. Given them a week’s wages and send the fools home to drink it away”.

The boat-men were muttering too, wielding darker oaths and angrier words: “These greedy churls should not deprive us of the treasure. We hauled in the net; we dragged up this treasure. These leeches shall have none of it”.

And without a word, the first meaty crewman grabbed his boathook, a long pike of wood, with a vicious spike at its tip, and plunged it towards his hated masters. Dansie was struck by surprise, and collapsed with barely a whimper, like a broken marionette. Doughton blurted out an oath, but the sheer force of the impact sent him spinning to the ground. Their blood stains mingled deep into the sand, and the rising tide swept their bodies from sight. The golden chair glimmered with pride in the clear moonlight. 

Panic leapt in. Murder had been committed; the Bailiff would soon enough string them up like lambs. Where could the guilty crewmen run? They had to head for France. 

So, they lugged the heavy throne into the skiff and headed out to the rocks. Yet the going was hard. Somewhere beyond the Ecréhous, a gang of unknown sailors in an unmarked pinnace came alongside. They offered help; a little too effusively, for they had spied the astonishing treasure and sought to claim it as their own. Out in the turbulent sea, daggers were drawn with these strange assailants, and a brief and bloody skirmish erupted. As they veered off away into the night, one of the two Jersey sailors lay dying. 

The last surviving fisherman panicked; he could not sail this boat alone. The French shore was looming up fast, so he wrapped the golden chair in a sail and leapt out with it into the choppy brine. It was a madcap gamble. He could not hold his treasure; the weight was too great. The cursed chair slipped back into the waves, plunging back down to the drowned kingdom of the forest. 

The next morning, the fisherman was found washed up on the Norman shore, somewhere near Granville. They tried to save him of course, but he was already cut too deep, his limbs pulverised by the reefs. He was utterly delirious, babbling some tale of a golden throne, of a terrible treasure lost under the waves. 

At the third watch of night he died, and they buried him by the foreshore, in the stranger’s cemetery. No-one ever learned his name.

This story features in Jersey: Secrets of the Sea which is available on Amazon UK and in Jersey bookshops.

This newsletter is written by Paul Darroch at Open Page Learning Ltd which is registered with the Jersey Office of the Information Commissioner. See our privacy policy.

March 30, 1899

The Casquets, near Alderney

March proved deathly icy, a month of buds freezing on the branches, in a year without a Spring. In America, freak snowstorms smothered the South, with snowball fights on the steps of the Florida statehouse. Britain’s fate was less exotic, with rain-drenched gloom and vicious frosts that strangled the first daffodils.

Yet the Easter holidays were coming. Colonel George Dixon, of Surrey, longed for the succour of milder climes, and booked a family holiday. A Channel Islands break was always an alluring prospect; to step from the train at Southampton and stroll to the quay was sheer ease. That March morning, two hundred passengers stepped on board the magnificent SS Stella, and its state-of-the-art electric lighting glinted invitingly in the morning light.

It was the first cruise of the holiday season. Captain Reeks knew that the SS Ibex, his bitter rival, would be hard on his heels. The last ship to arrive in the islands would be forced to wait its turn to dock at St Helier. The race was on. In this battle of wills, Stella was a name to conjure with; her powerful triple-expansion engines and a racing speed of 18 knots gave her a decisive advantage.

At 11.20am on Maundy Thursday, the Stella slipped out of port. The sun was glittering on the waves; it was shaping up to be a smooth crossing. The hours slid by. Captain Reeks knew the Casquet rocks lay on his course, but heaven knew they were paper tigers these days, defanged by a great foghorn that roared three great blasts with clockwork precision. And this afternoon, as the Stella suddenly pierced a cotton wool mountain of sea-mist, he heard no such warning.

The Channel weather had turned on a penny. A veil of freezing fog descended, white and cold. The chill insinuated every cloak, and the wind whipped every shawl. Colonel Dixon, on deck, thought he heard a faint sound, from afar, but it was hard to discern when the wind made every ear sing. Instead he turned to an officer. “It is unfortunate, this fog coming on”. “Yes, it has spoiled a good run”, the sailor replied. An elderly passenger muttered that he had never seen such speed in these conditions before. SS Stella plunged heedlessly on into the fog.

Visibility dropped like a stone. The crockery in the first-class lounge was shaking, vibrating with the extreme speed. Dark-liveried servants secured it in place, and then the urgent clattering eased. And there was just the eerie silence again, of water parting at the rate of knots, of the white haze all around, and the icy breath of the sea.

The clock struck four, and the world ended. The angels announced this with three trumpet blasts that physically shook the ship, and left the sailors clutching their ears. The din was coming from directly above; SS Stella was at the very foot of the foghorn. Colonel Dixon gasped, but the reflex of his military training swiftly asserted itself and he appraised the situation. A vicious rock, taller than the ship itself, loomed just yards ahead of them.

The ship screeched into full speed astern, lurching violently, felling the legs of men like trees. Then the body of the ship was ripped open like the belly of a hare. Colonel Dixon felt the ship slice away beneath him, as a granite ridge amputated the hull. He whispered an urgent prayer.

SS Stella would be granted no languorous, gradual slide into the oblivion; no bands would play on deck as gentlemen exchanged farewells over choice brandy. The razor reefs of the Channel Islands inflicted a swifter death; within seven minutes of impact, the ship would be swallowed by the freezing sea.

The crew, with commendable precision, started to lower the lifeboats. Their discipline was astonishing, for the deck was already the angle of a sloping roof.  Mary Ann Rogers, the chief stewardess, saw most of the women and children to safety in a boat. She sacrificed her own lifejacket for a young girl. Some urged her to jump to safety; but the lifeboat lay low in the water and was clearly overladen; she would not risk the lives of her passengers. She waved a cheery “Good-bye” and continued to do her duty.

Colonel Dixon, meanwhile, scrambled with his wife and children into the starboard lifeboat. Four boats were safely down; a fifth set to launch. The deck was bucking high now, reaching a tipping point. Then the waters surged in, and the boilers exploded. A series of terrifying thuds ensued, with a ferocious hiss of steam and a stinging mist that covered everything. In the chaos, the fifth lifeboat capsized during launch, spewing women and children into the icy maw of the sea.

The ship was almost vertical now, readying for its fatal dive. A young mother and her two sons floundered on the deck. The youngest was clutching his cherished football. In her last desperate moments, she tied him to his football for buoyancy, just before the ship started the final plunge.

The four lifeboats pushed out into the frigid water, and the survivors watched the tragedy unfold like a tableau from a horrific Bosch etching. Mary Ann Rogers was heard to cry: “Lord, have me!” as she tumbled into the abyss. Someone grabbed the young lad with the football and dragged him safely into a skiff. He would live, but never see his mother or brother again.

Driving a terrible vortex in its wake, the SS Stella plunged down to the seabed. Men floundered like seals in the water, gasping and screaming. Thirty people clung desperately to the roof of a large furniture van, which was floating away, and others swam for the rocks. Captain Reeks himself had gone down with his ship, and a hundred more would be dead by nightfall. 

On the starboard lifeboat, a man was hanging on the back of the boat, shivering and spluttering. He hooked his arm in, and it felt as icy as a corpse.  He heard voices calling for him to be thrown back in the water, like a fish; best not to rock the boat. Yet one burly man dissented and manhandled the man to safety. He spluttered on the boards of the boat like an eel. A lady wrapped him in her cloak and slowly he was coaxed back to warmth and life.  The voices that a moment earlier had called for him to drown were shamed and stilled.

The foghorn keepers above, snug in their lighthouse, never once realised that anything at all was amiss. They slumbered right through the unspeakable tragedy, as men froze to death on the rocks below them.

It was the early hours of Good Friday. Back in Southampton, a troubled and angry crowd was gathering in the street outside the LSWR offices. The SS Stella had not made expected landfall and its position was unknown. Then a telegram arrived from Guernsey, with the dreaded words: STELLA HAS GONE DOWN.

The passengers in the boats had paddled desperately, seeking to keep off the evil rocks. The little lifeboats were swept almost to the French coast, but as the tide turned, they were flung back towards the rocks. Horrifically, there were men still clinging on there, half-dead after the lashing of the freezing ocean. They pleaded desperately for help, but the lifeboats could not risk turning to save them.

Through fifteen hours of torment on the boat, the contralto Greta Williams began to sing, a beautiful prayer: “O rest in the Lord, wait patiently for me". The survivors continued the refrain, hour after shivering hour. And eventually a pale dawn broke, and deliverance came, as the SS Vera scooped them to safety.

The horrific Victorian tragedy was done. A Board of Inquiry met in due course to dissect the evidence. The crew, it determined, had acted impeccably. “South Western men behaved like bricks”; in the words of one survivor. The disaster was pinned squarely on the captain’s poor judgment, and any suggestion of ships “racing” was swept under the carpet. Yet the sailing timetables were quietly altered so that direct competition was impossible. Then the survivors limped home, and the country mourned its dead.

To this day, in Southampton, there stands a memorial to Mary Ann Rogers, the stewardess who sacrificed her life for her passengers. Her image is immortalised too in stained glass in Liverpool Cathedral, the story of her mercy frozen in time, as cold and beautiful as starlight.

Thank you for reading. You can discover more Jersey maritime tales in my second book, Jersey: Secrets of the Sea (Seaflower, 2019). You can also subscribe to my podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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All audio, photo and text (c) Paul Darroch 2023