Founder
This business is known as E J Gallichan and Company, and was founded by Jean Gallichan, born in 1825. There seems little doubt that the year the business was opened was 1845 - that is the year quoted by today's owners and shown on their shopfront, and also in the 1881 advert reproduced below.
But the history of the Gallichan family's involvement in the jewellery and silver trade is confused. Silver in the Channel Islands, the definitive work on the subject, records that 'in 1790 Matthieu Gallichan advertised that he would sell by auction at The Duke of York silver chandeliers, coffee-pots and other articles, presumably imported from England for the purpose. He was perhaps an antecedent of Jean Gallichan. A Matthieu Gallichan, a banker trading in 1817, may be either this man or his son'.
Both these suggested family connections seem unlikely. The only Mathieu Gallichans (there was no Matthieu) born at the right time to have been dealing in silver in 1790 were the son of Philippe and Judith, nee Baudet, born in St Lawrence in 1747, and the son of Jean and Elizabeth Pirouet, born in St Helier in 1878. We believe that it was the second of these who married Anne Picot in Trinity in 1773. They had two sons, Jean and Philippe, but neither had any connection with the ancestors of Edward John and his father Jean.
There is a further mystery some years further on. Journalist and author Walter Matthew Gallichan was born above the jewellery shop in 1861, and is commemorated on a blue plaque on the side of the building. But he does not appear to have any close connection with the jewellers.
The only established dates when Jean was in business as a jeweller and watchmaker, according to Silver in the Channel Islands, were 1852 to 1874. This is not supported by the 1851 census returns, which show two Gallichan households at 26 Royal Square, a street number not otherwise found The first is headed by Jean's father, Edouard Gallichan, born in 1799 and married at St Saviour in 1824 to Anne de Ste Croix. They had ten children, but in 1851 the only ones living with them were Matthieu, Ann Jane, Mary Ann and Eliza Ann. Matthieu and his sister Ann Jane were described as wine and spirit merchants.
The second household was headed by Edouard and Anne's eldest son, Edouard Josue, who is described in the census as an inkeeper.
No mention of Jean Gallichan nor the business, but a census returns in a separate district book show him living at 25 Royal Square, trading with his wife Mary Ann as watchmakers. Problem solved, as far as the business is concerned, but where 25 and 26 Royal Square are supposed to have been located is still a mystery. By the next census in 1861, Jean's jewellery business was listed where we would expect it to be, at No 16
The authors of the book add that Jean was succeeded in the business by his son Edward John, after whom E J Gallichan was named, by 1894. But Almanac entries suggest that the transition from father Jean to son Edward John was between 1880 and 1886.
Neither of the Gallichans was a silversmith. Although pieces have been found with a Gallichan mark, they are believed to be of Guernsey or UK origin, and to have been overstamped by the Gallichans.
Family tree
The shops's Royal Square frontage
The clock outside the building
The company's silver mark, used to overstamp items made elsewhere
The interior of E J Gallichan's jewellery shop in the Royal Square in 1961. Behind the counter is Eric Fisher, who was manager from just after the war until he retired
1881 advert
