Archive pictures of the week - 2016
From theislandwiki
4 January 2016
St Peter's Barracks
St Peter's Barracks was one of the largest military establishments in Jersey, and continued in use into the 1930s, even though it was no longer needed to house garrison troops. In 1939 the barracks housed the Royal Army Service Corps' Workshops and Technical School, and hundreds of young soldiers were trained there to use and maintain motor vehicles before war brought an end to these activities. (An account of life at the Technical School). By then the new airport had been built alongside the barracks, and, the Army having no further use for them after the Occupation, they were sold for the value of the land - £5,000 - to the States in 1948 and demolished as more and more space was required beyond the perimeter of the original aerodrome.
11 January 2016
Quay widening
We were sent this picture by a Jerripedia supporter, along with a number of other images of St Helier Harbour, together with the plea:'So little has been written about how St Helier Harbour was developed in the 19th century. Can't you give us some more information?' The writer was absolutely correct. Indeed, given its importance to the island over the past three centuries or so, very little has ever been written about St Helier Harbour. We are not aware of any books devoted to the subject, and only one article seems to have been included in the Annual Bulletin of La Société Jersiaise, and that only covered the period to the end of the 18th century. The picture shows work undertaken towards the end of the 19th century to widen the North Quay, which formed the outer boundary of the Harbour until the construction of the Albert Pier. It was originally a very narrow structure, just sufficiently wide to unload cargo from sailing vessels which berthed only on the inside. The advent of steamships, the growth in trade, and the failure of the planned expansion of the Harbour in the 1870s, led to the decision to widen the North Quay at the end of the 1880s. This photograph, which is unfortunately of rather poor quality, shows the start of this work with the widening of the Weighbridge end of the quay. Eventually it would be widened along its full length, and warehouses and passenger terminals built. We have taken our correspondent's plea to heart and by using a selection of pictures already in our Harbour picture gallery, we are in the process of creating a Pictorial history of the development of St Helier Harbour
18 January 2016
Studio portrait
Like so many old family photographs, there were no names on the back to identify this delightful portrait taken by T Price and Son in about 1895. Thomas Price was born in 1839 and began studio portraiture in London around 1862, moving to Jersey in 1869. By 1891 his son, also Thomas, had joined the business. They traded at 2 and 4 Peter Street, and also for a time in Queen Street. This is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of their studio portraits which survive, and together with the work of other photographers active in Jersey during the Victorian era, they are a vital part of the island's social history, showing particularly how fashions evolved decade by decade. We have just added a new gallery - Jersey fashions, decade by decade - of family portraits taken from the 1850s through to the 1930s, including the work of most of the important professional photographers active in the island during this period.
25 January 2016
Taxi!
It's 1896, and it will be another three years before the motor car makes an appearance in Jersey and some years further before the motorised taxi goes into service. Queen Victoria's statue was unveiled in the circular Weighbridge garden a year before and, as it would be for many years until buses took over, part of the area surrounding the garden is used as a taxi rank. Business appears to be slow and there is time for one of the carriage drivers to sit and read a newspaper while another watches the photographer at work. Note that, as always in this era, gentlemen wore hats, either the bowler of the working classes or the top hat of those with a higher station in society. Perhaps the man on the left was not a taxi driver but a passenger. It's strange to note that this photograph arrived at Jerripedia in a large batch of new images from a French collection, many of which have been added to the site over the past week.
1 February 2016
Old album
This picture of Gorey, which was taken in the middle of the 19th century, is from an album of some of the oldest photographs of Jersey in existence. Collected by London shop owner and photography enthusiast Richard Willats, the album is now owned by Princeton University in the United States, which has placed it online. Many of the images in the album were taken by a Mr Brodie. Although he was clearly a pioneer of photography, particularly in Jersey, his name has not previously come to light in connection with the island and nothing is known about him. The album contains more than 250 paper photographs, believed to have been taken between the 1840s and 1880s, and about 80 of them were apparently taken in Jersey. This picture of Gorey is difficult to date, but comparing it with other pictures in our collection for which we have dates, we believe that it is very early, probably taken in the late 1840s or early 1850s. We base this opinion on a comparison of the state of development of the properties along the pier. There are gaps in the row facing the photographer which had been filled in by the 1860s. The picture also clearly shows ships being built on the shoreline in the left foreground. Visit our page Pictures of mid-19th century Jersey in remarkable album to see more pictures of the island taken by Mr Brodie and collected by Mr Willats. We also have A new timeline of photography in Jersey in the 19th century
8 February 2016
19th century hotels
Last weeks photograph of Gorey Pier was taken too early to show the hotel which would eventually occupy about a third of the pier's length, and be one of the largest of its era in Jersey. It has had a variety of names, including Lestang's British Hotel, Cantell's British Hotel, and from 1911 to 1920, Le Bourdiec's British Hotel. This was the period when it was leased by George Lestang to a former chef, Gustave Le Bourdiec, from Brittany. He is shown in the centre of the upper picture with his wife on the left. Not only did M Le Bourdiec have an impressive car, but he also owned a large yacht which he kept moored at Gorey, and a racehorse which won the island's most prestigeous race in 1920. The hotel below would have had an appropriate name had it also been located at Gorey, on Jersey's east coast, but the Great Eastern Hotel was in the centre of the north of the island opposite St John's Church. In this picture, taken in the 1880s, part of the hotel was used as a bowling alley. The smaller building on the right of it is believed to be the Militia drill shed. More information about both hotels can be found by following the blue links in this text
15 February 2016
19th century maritime pictures
We were looking for a special picture to celebrate Jerripedia's sixth birthday today when these two arrived. Both were taken in the 19th century, and the lower one, from an album of pictures by J C Atkinson, is believed to date from 1895. The upper picture, from a stereo pair taken at West Park shows a ship being built at F C Clarke's shipyard. This means that the photograph was probably taken between 1865, when Jersey's ship building industry was at it peak, and 1880, when it had all but disappeared. The West Park shipyard was one of the island's largest, and further photographs of it and other yards on Jersey's coastline, can be found in our picture gallery of Jersey shipbuilding. Other photographs from his album suggest that Mr Atkinson may have been an officer in a garrison regiment. His picture below shows barrels of potatoes being loaded on to a cargo vessel alongside the Albert Pier.
22 February 2016
French farmworkers return home
The return of seasonal farm labourers from Jersey to Brittany ports and then the towns they lived in was always a major event in the second half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th. These pictures show the farmworkers landing at Binic, on the north coast of Brittany, probably in the 1910s. There they were greeted by enthusiastic family members, anxious to discover how they had got on during their stay of several weeks to work on the potato harvest and other farm tasks. They could earn more in a few weeks in Jersey over the spring and summer than they could in a whole year at home, where jobs were scarce and poorly paid.
28 February 2016
Grouville mill?
If this picture is what it claims to be, it is a remarkably early photograph of a Jersey windmill not previously known. The caption to the photograph was 'Gorey Common mill', but as far as we are aware, there was never a windmill on the common. There was, indeed, a Grouville mill, one of the three original Royal mills, which the King's tenants in the east of Jersey were obliged to use to grind their corn, but that was on higher ground above the coastline, not on the common. And although the mill may have been of the Dutch post style in the early days, by the time photography had been invented it would have been a granite tower construction, as seen elsewhere in the island. So where did this mill stand? The image is reminiscent of some quarry photographs of the 19th century, and the nearest quarry to Grouville Common was at Les Maltieres. There appears to be a water tank alongside the mill structure, so was it used for pumping water from a well or borehole? It is all something of a mystery, as have been so many of our recent weekly feature pictures. We would like to believe that the photograph was taken in Jersey, but when and where? See below next picture.
Update: We have had various suggestions, ranging from the quarry idea to something connected with the Jersey Eastern Railway, and particularly like the proposal that this was a wind pump and water tower at Grouville Station, designed for the replenishment of the tanks of the steam engines. We decided to invert the picture and this view seems to coincide with the picture below of Gorey Village Station, taken in 1907. The main station building, with advertising on the side, looks very similar to the building in the windmill picture. This would place the windmill and tank in roughly the same position as the later water tank on the end of the station platform. The station opened in 1874, and we suspect that this picture was taken at much the same time. Thanks to all those who have contributed suggestions over the past few days
Gorey Village Station in 1907 - is this the location of our mystery windmill?
7 March 2016
The Weighbridge - but when?
This picture of the Weighbridge was sent to us last week. At first glance it appears to be very old, but how old? It was part of a set of pictures taken in 1921 (or so the information provided with it suggested) but surely it is older than that? There are many clues which can be found when attempting to date old photographs, but they can be misleading. The quality of this image suggests that it is much older than 100 years, but it could be a poor quality image. The boys with barrows darting across the Weighbridge past horse-drawn vans also suggest Victorian times. But there is one definitive clue which cannot be ignored: the Weighbridge gardens with the statue of Queen Victoria at their centre can clearly be seen in the background. They were not there before 1895 and the shrubs and bushes seem to have matured considerably compared with images taken at that time, so we are certainly creeping into the 20th century. The last clue is right in the foreground, where the shape of what appears to be the back of a motorised covered van can be made out. This begins to tally much more closely with the date of 1921 previously suggested, and the clothes worn by the couple at the bottom left seems to us to correspond to the early 'twenties. Can anybody offer any other suggestions?
14 March 2016
Victoria Avenue Cafe
This was Sunnycroft, a cafe on Victoria Avenue run in the 'fifties and 'sixties by George and Noreen Brasford. The picture was taken in the early 1950s, before Victoria Avenue was turned into a dual carriageway. A low wall was built at this point to separate the garden from the wide pavement which was created, and the cafe continued to operate. It was very popular because it was half way between First Tower and Millbrook and opposite a particularly pleasant stretch of beach, served by ample parking. In addition to the front garden, where patrons could sit at tables and enjoy their afternoon tea, there was a side window on the right of the property as viewed in this picture, overlooking the lane which runs between Victoria Avenue and St Aubin's Road, from which ice creams and cold drinks were sold. At this time there was a small undeveloped field immediately behind the house (since built on). Behind this, and partly visible behind Sunnycroft to the left, was Belvedere Terrace, a terrace of seven large houses which has its frontage on St Aubin's Road, and is still standing today. For many years after it ceased to be a cafe, Sunnycroft reverted to being a private house. It was demolished in the early 21st century and replaced by a larger property closer to the road.
21 March 2016
Oyster boats
These two pictures of Gorey Harbour were both one half of a Stereoview, a very popular format with photographers in the second half of the 19th century. They show a very similar scene, that above taken from much closer to the boats on the harbour bed at low tide. These are the remnants of the large oyster fishing fleet which used the harbour from 1810 to about 1872. The picture above was sent to us with a caption indicating a date of 1870, when there were only a handful of boats still operating out of the port, and we suspect that it may have been taken a few years earlier than that. The picture below is the standard view of the harbour taken from the shoreline to the west of Mont Orgueil Castle. This was before a seawall was built, land reclaimed and the Jersey Eastern Railway was extended to the harbour station. Few photographers, particularly those with the heavy equipment used in the Victorian era, ventured out from the shoreline across the muddy harbour to take close-up views such as that above.
28 March 2016
Oldest outdoor photograph of Jersey?
This photograph shows the French Harbour, one of the original sections of St Helier Harbour, protected by what was called South Pier, then Old South Pier, and is again known as South Pier today. The picture immediately attracted our attention because it shows such a lovely view of a port in the Victorian era, crowded with wooden sailing ships. Undoubtedly some of these vessels would have been built in Jersey, which was a major ship building centre in the middle of the 19th century. But closer inspection reveals that this photograph is remarkable not for what is in it, but for what is not there. One of the best ways of dating photographs is if they do not show a building or other structure known to have been erected at a certain date, and if they show another structure known to have been built earlier, that gives a timeframe during which the photograph must have been taken. There is something clearly missing from this image, and that is the Albert Pier, the outer arm of St Helier Harbour for over a century, which should stretch across behind the South Pier, ending just after the angle in that pier. Closer inspection of the picture shows that there appears to be a pier under construction behind the South Pier, and on the very left of the image is a dark triangular shape, which is the end of the Victoria Pier. That was completed in 1846 and renamed from its original New South Pier in honour of the visit of Queen Victoria that year. The new North Pier was started in 1846 and completed in 1853, then renamed Albert Pier in honour of Prince Albert. This dates the photograph to between these last two years, and given the state of progress on the new pier, which has yet to reach its full length or height, probably somewhere in the middle - perhaps 1849-1851. This makes this a remarkable and historic photograph, because, although studio portraits are in existence which have been dated to around 1845 - five years after the first demonstration of photography is believed to have taken place in the island - the earliest picture taken outdoors in the island showing any recognisable structure was previously believed to be that of Victoria College, taken in 1853, a few months after it opened, by Charles, the son of exiled French writer Victor Hugo.
4 April 2016
Carriage ride
Following on from our photograph of a horse-drawn taxi a few weeks back, we now have an early 20th century photograph of a well-to-do family out for a drive, probably in their own carriage, driven by their own chauffeur. On a sunny day in a quiet country lane the opportunity was presented to stop and take a photograph. Perhaps there had been another gentlemen in the carriage with the two ladies, and it was he who took the picture. We suspect that the photograph dates from around 1905, perhaps a little later
11 April 2016
Airport on the beach
Air travel is not what it used to be. Certainly not what it was in the 1930s, when the beach at West Park served as Jersey's airport, before the construction of a new airport at St Peter which did not have to suspend flying activities when the tide came in. After the introduction of regular flights between Jersey and the English south coast and London, demand grew rapidly, and at times Jersey Airways' entire fleet of eight de Havilland biplanes could be seen on the beach at the same time. As this picture from our gallery of photographs of flying from the beach shows, the convenience of air transport was very much restricted to the well-heeled, with the days of budget flights still way in the future. Our Aviation picture gallery contains the largest online collection of pictures of flying in Jersey, from the arrival of the first aircraft in a race from St Malo in 1912 to the present day. So large has this gallery become that we have just divided it into chronological sections to make loading faster for those without high-speed internet connections
18 April 2016
Constable's passport
Jersey passports today are processed by the Passport Office in Jersey, but issued in the UK, because it is no longer thought safe for the passports which are printed in England to be sent to Jersey blank. The documents are issued on behalf of 'Her Britannic Majesty's Lieut-Governor and Commander in Chief in the name of Her Majesty'. Things were not always quite so formal, as our feature picture shows. In 1849 Jean Le Bas was issued with this passport by his parish Constable, Jean Morel, so that he could travel to France with his brother. The document does not indicate which parish was involved, but a check of our Lists of Constables of Jersey parishes reveals that it was St Lawrence, where Mr Morel had been elected to office in 1847. It is interesting that the document refers to him as Connetable ou Maire. It became fashionable in St Helier in the late 19th century era to refer to the parish Constable as Mayor, but this did not happen as early as 1847, when the English language had not yet taken hold in administrative matters. It certainly did not happen in the country parishes, which persist to this day in calling their Constable, monsieur or madame le Connetable. Presumably the same document was printed to be used throughout the island and the use of the term Maire was for the benefit of the French, who may not have understood the role of Constable, but whose own maires were, and remain, officials of the highest standing. It is also noteworthy that this passport was only valid for France, where the 'civil and military authorities' were requested to let Mr Le Bas and his unnamed brother 'pass and circulate freely' and give them 'help and protection in case of need'. Perhaps passports which allowed the bearer to travel further afield were issued at a higher level and those limited to France were the precursors of the identity documents used in the second half of the 20th century, which allowed holidaymakers who had come to Jersey without the need for passports to take day excursions to France. We have seen other documents which show that the process of Constables issuing passports started as early as the 1830s, but the document below indicates that it was the Lieut-Governor who issued them in 1827. It is noteworthy that this document was entirely in English, and also only valid for travel to France, and for a single voyage. The document was issued to Philip Le Gros by the Inspector of Stranger's Office, and signed by Philip Le Geyt.
25 April 2016
St Lawrence from the air
Few areas of the island have remained unchanged over the past 60 years, particularly in the six parishes which touch the sea along Jersey's south coast. But as this aerial picture of the heart of St Lawrence shows, when compared with a recent Google satellite image, there are exceptions. The photograph was taken from a DC3 Dakota aircraft in 1959. It shows the parish hall and adjoining parish church cemetery towards the bottom left. Most of the fields can be seen to be the same shape that they remain today, and although some of the farms have a few additional buildings, the only significant development is that of Clos du Sommier, built around the former parish arsenal between the parish hall and parish primary school
2 May 2016
From horsepower to petrol power
These two pictures were taken just nine years apart, the upper one just over a century ago in August 1913, and the lower one in the summer of 1922. The obvious difference is that with the Great War just months away, the internal combustion engine had still not made the progress in Jersey that it had elsewhere, and horse-drawn buses and excursion cars, or charabancs, were the norm. But once the war had finished, Jersey was dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century, and with fashions changing rapidly, hats no longer de rigeur, and ladies enjoying their own group outings, the face of Jersey's roads and lanes had changed for ever. It is interesting to note that Blue Coach Tours are still in business today.
9 May 2016
On the beach
Almost as soon as the motor car was invented enthusiasts wanted to race each other in them, and Jersey was no exception. Apart from a brief period after World War 2 when international road races were held between West Park and Bel Royal, motor races have been confined to the island's beaches, and the large expanse of open sand at low tide in St Ouen's Bay has been the most popular venue over the decades. Here we have an Evening Post picture from 1956, showing the start of the race. What is notable is that the driver of the 'Skinner Special' in the foreground is smartly dressed in a blazer. Is it possible that he was also wearing a collar and tie?
23 May 2016
Fake photograph
Apologies for the absence of a new weekly feature picture during the past fortnight, but our editor has been to Jersey and, after several days research at the Public Library, has just returned with a wealth of new material which will find its way on to the site in the weeks and months to come. In the meantime, here is a picture which has been on the site for some five years, purporting to show a horse bolting with its cart down the steps at Queen's Road in February 1905. We have always known that the picture was a fake, to the extent that it stretches credibility to believe that a photographer just happened to be passing and took a photograph as the horse and cart descended the steps, but we now know that it an even bigger fake than we previously believed. Jerripedia reader Kathy Python has sent us a message to say that she has seen a similar picture of exactly the same horse and cart descending steps in a park in an entirely different location somewhere in the UK. It seems that the event never happened and the picture, copies of which frequently come up for sale on internet auction sites, must now be dismissed as an Edwardian fraud. Update: Further research has revealed that the picture may have been faked after the event, but it did happen, at Queen's Road in February 1905, and was reported in the newspapers of the time. The picture appears to have been reproduced elsewhere to claim that the event happened at a different location
30 May 2016
On the beach
Our editor's visit to Jersey earlier this month has yielded such a wealth of new photographs to be added to the site that we did not know where to start in narrowing down our choice of a weekly feature picture. The majority remain to be processed and uploaded, so we have instead chosen this delightful picture of a young lady in front of a row of bathing machines, taken in 1922. There is nothing specific to identify the photograph as having been taken in Jersey, but we are confident that it was because it comes from a family album of photographs from that year, most with obvious Jersey backgrounds. We believe that this image was taken either at West Park, or Greve d'Azette, where the largest numbers of bathing machines were to be found a century ago.
6 June 2016
Weighing potatoes
Pictures of the Weighbridge, where farmers took their potatoes and other crops to be weighed before they could be exported, are very common. We particularly like this one, however, showing a farmer leading his horse and cart through the public weighbridge with a load of potatoes in barrels ready for export. The picture probably dates from the latter years of the 19th century. Notice how smartly dressed our farmer was, with three-piece suit and a cap.His was a small load of potatoes, but undoubtedly of vital importance for his family in the weeks to come.
13 June 2016
19th century wedding
We thought we should have a picture with lots of people in this week, and we chose one apparently taken in 1871, although the date is subject to considerable doubt. The picture shows the wedding of the Rev Josiah Cox to Alice Morley. According to information provided with the picture, the couple were married at St Aubin's Methodist Chapel, Jersey, on 28 June 1871. Alice was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, in 1849, and her husband, who was considerably older, was born in Tipton, Devon in 1828. Alice came to Jersey with her parents, George Morley and Mary Ann Ogle. The family became established in the island and lived for several generations at La Hauteur, at the top of Mont Les Vaux, St Brelade. Before his marriage Josiah, a Methodist minister, had been one of the first Methodist missionaries to go to China, arriving in January 1853, having travelled via San Francisco, where he was living in 1851. Some reports have him working in China for 24 years before being forced to return to Britain after a serious illness, but this conflicts with the date given for his marriage, although it is supported by the dates of his presence as a Methodist minister in Jersey - 1876-77 and 1884. It appears that Josiah came to Jersey immediately after returning from China and probably met and married Alice some years later than the date given for the wedding photograph. At the time of the 1881 census the couple, who did not have any children, were living in Pembroke, Wales. They are known to have travelled to New York in 1891, having been back in Jersey earlier that year at the time of the census. Josiah died in Kent in 1906 and Alice lived until 1924, when she also died in Kent.
20 June 2016
Airport and barracks
We started the year with a picture of St Peter's Barracks, taken from the air, and here is another one, probably taken in 1937, and showing the newly completed airport behind. When the Airport opened, aircraft took off and landed from left to right, or right to left, on the grass in front of the terminal buildings. There was a second landing strip on the left of the picture, and as planes became bigger and the Airport became busier after the War, more land would be acquired to lengthen this and create a much longer runway, as shown in the picture below
27 June 2016
Jeweller's shopfront
They don't make shopfronts like they used to. This is Edgar Brothers' jewellers and silver smiths, which was situated at 43 Halkett Place, on the corner with Waterloo Street. The photograph was taken in the first decade of the 20th century, possibly as early as 1901 when the business became established there. The brothers after whom the business was named were the sons of Albert Edgar. He came to Jersey from England, where he was born in 1829, and was initially employed by local silversmith John Le Gallais, before setting up in business on his own in 1874. His business was initially at 14 Vine Street, where he was listed in a 1880 almanac as a watchmaker. He had moved to 6 Library Place by 1890. A 1900 almanac shows his son Charles there, but by the following year's census, Charles (1869- ),is younger Brother Arthur (1875- ) and their elder sister Alice (1861- ) are show living at 43 Halkett Place, with Charles as head of household, and shown as a watchmaker. Their other brother Alfred (1872- ) was living at 3 New Street with his wife Georgina and two-year-old daughter Violet. Alfred is also listed as a watchmaker. There is no mention of father Albert in the census. How long Charles and Arthur remained in business in Halkett Place is uncertain. It is recorded in the 1910 Evening Post almanac, but after that date the almanacs show individuals resident at the premises rather than the business operating there. Frederick Cohen and Nicholas du Quesne Bird's book Silver in the Channel Islands which is reproduced in full in Jerripedia, notes that Albert Edgar was known for overstriking his own mark on older silver items manufactured by silversmiths in Jersey and England
4 July 2016
Millais painting sold
This portrait by the great Jersey artist Sir John Everett Millais was sold by Christie's in London last week for £602,500. It is a painting of 19-year-old barmaid Annie Miller, which Millais painted in 1854, when he was 25. Millais was not born in Jersey - his mother only made it as far as Southampton when trying to get back to Jersey for the birth - and left at the age of nine to study art in London, although through his teenage years he spent holidays in Jersey. Christie's catalogue for the sale said:Violet's Message is an intimate, jewel-like picture that Millais painted in 1854 at a critical moment in his personal and professional life. It is one of the few oils from the artist's Pre-Raphaelite period still in private hands and represents Millais' incisive move to painting contemporary life, as well as signalling the transition in advanced British art from Pre-Raphaelism to Aestheticism.' Our page devoted to Millais and his work contains over 180 further paintings and drawings, the largest collection online, and includes another portrait of Annie Miller.
11 July 2016
Concours Musicale
This photograph, which is much larger and clearer than another copy which has been on the site for some time, shows competitors arriving on the Victoria Pier for the Concours Musicale in St Helier in 1911. The photograph was taken by photojournalist Percival Dunham, not long after he arrived in Jersey. He would go on to work for the Morning News and Illustrated Weekly, before his career was interrupted by the outbreak of the Great War. As far as we know the 1911 Concours was the last of the musical competitions which had started in 1905, and this picture shows the team from St Denis in the foreground. Now a northern suburb of Paris, although still an individual commune, St Denis 100 years ago was very much a separate town, and this copy of the photograph is held by the town archive. It also shows clearly that the Concours involved teams from Laval in Brittany; Lamblore, a tiny commune in the Centre-Val de Loire region, with a population at the time of only 271; and the capital city Paris, which at the time had a population approaching 3 million. Other towns which participated in the Concours, which our page on the festival shows to have been one of Jersey's major events of the Edwardian era, included Rouen and St Brieuc. How much could a revival of this event contribute to the boost to visitor numbers from France which the island authorities are now working towards?
18 July 2016
Sooty by name ...
Our feature picture this week shows St Helier Harbour in the 1960s, with car ferry Duchesse de Normandie in the foreground, berthed on the Albert Pier. It's not difficult to see why the vessel was known to islanders as Sooty. She could often be seen belching out dark grey smoke (at times, much more than in this photograph) and she was blamed, probably unfairly, because most of the damage had been done years before, for turning the granite walls of the old abattoir building at the landward end of the pier (on the right of the photograph) black. The Duchesse operated between Jersey and St Malo, and occasionally to Granville, and was much loved by islanders who, after a period of reliance on cargo vessels, could once again travel with their cars on the way to a Continental motoring holiday. Sooty was eventually joined by another vessel, Duchesse de Bretagne, but this was the beginning of the end for another operator which failed to make money out of a route which simply did not carry enough traffic to justify the presence of two ships. Berthed behind the Duchesse is Trentonia, a cargo vessel which operated regularly to Jersey in the 1960s. On the skyline overlooking the town of St Helier in the background is Almorah Crescent.
25 July 2016
Guano importers
This photograph started us off on an investigation which at first left more questions than it provided answers. The first questions to be answered were where it was taken, and when. The initial suspicion that it was taken outside a store on the Esplanade was disproved by a check of almanacs either side of the turn of the 19th century to the 20th. We were soon able to establish that this was 19 Commercial Buildings, where H & T Proctor were listed as occupants in the 1910 Evening Post Almanac. They were presumably not trading there five years earlier because the 1905 Jersey Times Almanac shows P Le Miere as the occupant of No 19. The 1920 Evening Post Almanac also shows P Le Miere as the occupant of the premises, so perhaps he owned it and leased it to H & T Proctor as a store for their guano. Census returns do not help, because there is no obvious record of a P Le Miere in either the 1901 or 1911 censuses, although the weird and wonderful surname transcriptions for other Le Mieres suggest that he could well be there, but not found by the Ancestry search engine. Neither is there any record in either our birth/baptism database or the 1901 and 1911 censuses for H or T Proctor, or any other Proctor other than a Lance-Corporal in the Garrison regiment in 1911. Further research uncovered the history of H & T Proctor. It was not a Jersey company at all, but a Bristol based fertiliser manufacturer founded in 1812 by Henry and Thomas Proctor. Although the company’s speciality was bone marrow fertiliser, it was also heavily involved in the importation from South America of guano, a valuable fertiliser made from bird droppings found in large quantities on islands off Peru’s coast. Clearly H & T Proctor was a name sufficiently famous as far as quano was concerned for David Dumosch Ltd, who are clearly shown in the photograph to have been the sole agents for it in Jersey, to have given greater prominence to the Proctor name over their Commercial Buildings store. It would appear that the Special Jersey Guano was simply an advertising gimmick, because the fertiliser which brought so much prosperity to Jersey’s potato growing industry from its introduction in 1844 well into the 20th century, clearly came from much further afield.. Incidentally, both H & T Proctor and David Dumosch are still in business today.
1 August 2016
Vraic drying
Last week's feature picture, from the early 20th century, was of David Dumosch, importers of Proctor's guano, an important fertiliser for the island's potato crop. This week we have a much earlier picture of l'Etacq, in the north-west of the island, showing the other important ingredient for the best quality new potatoes - vraic. Unlike guano, vraic, or seaweed, was free, collected by the farmers from the beach and between the rocks at low tide, and then left to dry in heaps on the foreshore. Here it is being laid out in neat, evenly-spaced mounds, and to the left of the picture a worker can be made out adding to a mound from seaweed brought there by horse and cart. Although vraic could be freely collected from the island's beaches, the times when this was permitted were strictly controlled by the States. And, as our page devoted to the subject explains, it could be a very hazardous activity, and many islanders, unable to swim, lost their lives when they drowned while collecting vraic from the water and were either swept off rocks by an unexpected wave or simply lost their footing on the very slippery surface. The vraic which was collected was spread on the land over the winter and then ploughed in before the new year's crop was planted. Vraic was also used very dry as a fuel for farmhouse fires. As the picture below shows, little has changed today. It can be seen that this vraic drying place is right on the seaside. Close inspection of the two pictures, taken some 150 years apart, shows that a sizeable chunk of rock has disappeared from the top of the ouctrop behind in the intervening years, or perhaps that is it lying to the right of the 'pyramid' on the grass
8 August 2016
French visitors
Unfortunately we know very little about this super early photograph of Gorey Harbour. We believe that it was taken in the last decade or so of the 19th century, and that it shows a French naval vessel and its crew on the quay. A handful of the men standing alongside the boat are wearing what appears to be French naval uniform, but none of our editorial team are sufficiently knowledgeable about 19th century navy ships to be able to put an accurate date to this picture. Perhaps, because it is obviously powered solely by sail, it is earlier than we have suggested. Perhaps it is an older vessel kept in service in the latter years of the century. The buildings along the quay behind would give a clearer indication of the date if they were not concealed behind the masts and rigging. So, unless a Jerripedia reader has any suggestions, a more accurate dating of the picture is unlikely.
15 August 2016
150-year-old photographs
Four pictures for the price of one this week - everything on Jerripedia is free!. The connection is that they were all taken by photographer W W Gregory. They are currently for sale in France for 25-35 euros each, which seems a snip for pictures which are approximately 150 years old. They are described as being taken in 1865, but they may be a few years younger because Gregory is known to have been in business at 15 Queen Street, then 15 Bath Street, from 1868 to 1877. In 1861 he was joined by another photographer and they traded in Bath Street and then 28 Halkett Place from 1871 to 1877.
Little is known about Gregory, but a number of his images of Jersey scenes in the 1860s survive, and they are among the earliest of outdoor photographs taken in the island. It is often claimed that a photograph showing the Weighbridge and the Esplanade in the collection of La Société Jersiaise, dated to the 1860s is the oldest outdoor view taken in Jersey, but Jerripedia has a much older image of the Harbour, which may be as early as 1850.
There are only two images by Gregory in the Société archive, both studio portraits. The views here show St Catherine (top left), Princes Tower (top right)
A treeless Bouley Bay (bottom left) and an unusual view of the Hermitage from the back (bottom right)
22 August 2016
First aircraft
Many pictures survive of the first aircraft to land in Jersey in 1912 as the island provided a staging point for a race for early airplanes from St Malo. We have a large selection in our gallery, and every now and again it grows with the emergence of another different image. This one, which was published 104 years ago in the Chronique de Jersey, and is already in our gallery, but of much poorer quality. Now an original photographic print of the image has emerged, which can be reproduced at a much better quality than a copy from the newspaper. It is one of the best we have seen. It shows just how large was the crowd which gathered on the wet sand in St Aubin's Bay to witness this momentous occasion, and saw the tiny, primitive aircraft appear from behind Elizabeth Castle, before landing on the water's edge, followed by other competitors in the race. The aircraft in this picture is still just a speck above the rocks to the west of the castle, but it would have been just seconds away from landing in front of the crowd of onlookers.
29 August 2016
Lifting potatoes
Hand tinted postcards from the early 20th century are very common, although not particularly popular with serious collectors. This image is much earlier, and is a hand-tinted slide, produced in the 19th century, and one of a batch which has recently come our way. These are Breton farm workers, who would travel to the island to earn as much in a few weeks working on Jersey farms as they could in the rest of the year at home. Let's hope it was not a long, hot summer, because working in the fields for men wearing waistcoats and long-sleeved shirts, can never have been comfortable. As for the ladies in ankle-length skirts and formal blouses buttoned to the neck, it hardly bears thinking about what it must have been like for them on a sunny day.
5 September 2016
Parade smithy
This picture was sent to us with an embryo family tree and a request that we try to establish whether the John Samuel Baker in the tree was the same man in the photograph. After researching census returns, almanacs and church records we are satisfied that the Mr Bakers are one and the same. The photograph, probably taken in the first decade of the 20th century, shows John Samuel William Baker, a general smith, outside his premises which we have identified as 28 Parade Place(or more often simply known as The Parade). Mr Baker, who is described in two censuses as a 'blacksmith', but clearly had a much wider range of business activities, was married to Amelia, who is presumably standing at the first floor window. The couple had no children. They were living and trading from the property from at least 1890, and appear to have taken over the business from W Woods, who is recorded as a smith at No 28 as early as 1880. Interestingly the business is shown in 1930 as Woods and Baker, so perhaps there was a family connection, or a descendant of the earlier smith took over the business after John Baker retired. By 1940 the business traded as Woods and Co, and so it remained until the 1960,s when the Iron Stores took over 28 and 30 Parade. The property was rebuilt for them - our picture gallery of the Parade includes a photograph of the new building in 1989, still with a passage through to the cottages in the lane behind. And when the property was again rebuilt in the 1990s, that passage at ground floor level was retained. We have expanded the family tree we were sent with the photograph
12 September 2016
Oldest outdoor photographs of Jersey? – part 2
We featured the photograph on the left as our weekly selection at the end of March this year, and suggested that it might be the oldest surviving outdoor photograph of Jersey. Now a slightly different version of what appears to be the same photograph has surfaced in France, where it is offered for sale at 65 euros. It is described as circa 1870. We believe, however, that the photograph was probably taken some 20 years earlier. Both images were obviosly taken from the same viewpoint, within a short time of each other, but a close inspection confirms that they are, in fact, different photographs, with very minor differences, including the stance of the figure on the edge of the pier behind the ship in the centre of the picture, and the appearance of a dog on the harbour bed in the left-hand picture, but not the earlier one. The wider view to the left, shown in the newly acquired picture on the right, confirms that this is not the French Harbour as we believed when the earlier picture was used in March, but, as was soon suggested suggested to us, the adjoining English Harbour, with the area known as La Folie on the left. The pierhead behind in the centre left of the image is, therefore, not Victoria Pier but South Pier. If anything this picture is of lesser quality than the other, but it confirms that there is
nothing between the section of harbour and Elizabeth Castle on the horizon, where the Albert Pier is now, other than the foundations of the pier appearing just above water level at low tide, and that dates the pictures to around 1850, as we suggested in March. That date has since been supported by several people whose knowledge of Jersey shipping and harbour constuction is much greater than our own. We are confident that these photograph were taken well before the stereo pair of the top of the Old Harbour, the Weighbridge and Esplanade, which was taken on 14 September 1866 by George Bashford, and a copy of which is in the collection of La Societe Jersiaise. We say ‘a copy’ because a fortnight ago another copy of the Bashford picture was on offer on Ebay, and was quickly sold. That image is regularly referred to as the ‘oldest outdoor photograph of Jersey’ which it most certainly is not, or ‘the oldest photograph of the town of St Helier’, which it might be, depending on one’s interpretation of ‘town of St Helier’. A picture of the Royal Square, which has been on Jerripedia since 2012, when it was believed to date from 1880, is now believed to have been taken in 1852, pre-dating the Bashford stereo pair, as does a picture of Victoria College, taken by Victor Hugo’s son Charles, in 1853.
19 September 2016
A busy day at Havre des Pas Pool
We regularly come across pictures of Havre des Pas Pool, but not usually quite this crowded. This picture, probably taken in the mid-1930s, shows what a popular place it was, for swimming in the sea water pool, or just relaxing in a deckchair in the sun. As our history of the pool shows, it was opened in 1895 and was the scene for many swimming galas and particularly diving competitions, involving local divers and top international rivals.
26 September 2016
After the medal presentation ceremony
A number of pictures are in existence of the formal presentation of medals to long-serving Militia men in the Royal Square in 1905, and we have had some on the site, including the two above, for some time. The main picture, however, has only just come to light. It was clearly taken once the presentations were over and the large crowd of family and friends mingled with the men whose service was being honoured, and with their officers. This was the Sunday church parade on 1 October 1905, and five men were presented with medals, honouring service of 20 years or more, after a long campaign in the Channel Islands and elsewhere in the British Isles to have militia service recognised in this way. Further presentation would follow from 1906 to 1930, with a total of 37 medals awarded.
3 October 2016
A busy Gorey Pier
Gorey was a busy place at the end of the 19th century. No longer was it a centre for oyster fishing or shipbuilding - both these industries which caused a small village to grow into a town had died out. But it was an important link for the island's burgeoning tourist industry. In 1891 the Jersey Eastern Railway's track was extended from Gorey Village to the Harbour, which places that year as the earliest possible for these photographs, which, although received from two entirely different sources, were, we suspect, taken at more or less the same time. Francis John Cantell's expansion of his hotel into the largest on the pier took place between 1882 and 1892, and was complete by the time the lower picture was taken. The hotel was sold after his death in 1905 to George Lestang, whose name does not yet appear above the hotel's main nameboard, so we can confidently place both photographs between 1892 and 1905. The clothing worn by the men and women walking along the platform after leaving a train, and those waiting for a carriage in front of the hotel, would suggest very late Victorian, or Edwardian, so this would narrow the timescale to the last five years of the 19th century and the first five of the 20th. This was a period when many people would take the train from St Helier to Gorey and enjoy a seafood lunch, perhaps followed by a carriage ride through the eastern parishes back to town. Others would arrive by boat from Granville, which had a direct train link to Paris, and stay at the British Hotel. This business boomed in the years up to the Great War, but then all but vanished, and the railway never really recovered, closing in 1929, having been defeated by the motorised buses and char-a-bancs which took over from the horse and carriage
10 October 2016
Havre des Pas: Hotels, garages and dogs
We have a veritable feast of pictures of Havre des Pas this week, so please scroll down to make sure that you see all five. The first three were sent to us by one of our most loyal contributors, who is the source of many fascinating pictures throughout the site. Just wait for his pictures relating to bicycles which will appear here next week! Of course, we already have many pictures of the Hotel de la Plage and surrounding area, but until today none has shown so clearly the garage which stood next to it for several years after the hotel opened in 1931. This was Bayliss's Garage, built to house some of the earliest motorised excursion vehicles which took visitors staying in the Havre des Pas hotels on their island tours. The garage was built immediately next to the slipway at the bottom of Green Street, opposite the Seaforth Hotel, which shows most clearly in the picture above, and the fourth below.
Previously this had been a boat store for shipbuilders Vautier, and the fourth picture shows this at the end of the 19th century, after the Havre des Pas shoreline here ceased to be one of the island's most important shipbuilding areas. The top picture dates from just after the de la Plage opened, and the second photograph above was taken not long afterwards, but already the hotel had started to expand to the west (left) with a single story extension. Bayliss's Garage is still there, but by the time the third photograph was taken in the 1950s, it had gone, and the area it occupied was used for a car park for the hotel. The Marina Hotel further along to the right can be seen by then to have sprouted balconies to the front and side. We are not certain of the exact timing but in the fourth, 19th century picture, it may still have been the island's marine centre, yet to be converted into a hotel. In the bottom photograph (also received this week from a different source) it is in the background of a shot of a lady taking her magnificent trio of dogs (Samyoeds, we think) for a walk along the promenade.
17 October 2016
Cycles, punctures and lessons
Last week we promised you some fascinating cycling pictures, and here they are. The last decade of the 19th century and early years of the 20th were the peak time for cycling in Jersey. The invention of what became known as the safety bicycle and the pneumatic tyre at the end of the 1880s led to the opening of numerous sales outlets for cycles in Jersey in the 1890s, among them Willmore's at 11½ Gloucester Street. We don't know the exact date for these two images which were sent to us earlier in the month, but the advertisement apparently dates from just before the turn of the century and the photograph of an exhibition display from just after. This cycle business can not have been very long-lived, or certainly not at Gloucester Street, because there is no mention of Willmore's in the 1895 almanac, nor in 1905, but they are there in 1900, so the exhibition must have taken place fairly soon after the advertisement appeared. The location of the exhibition hall was initially uncertain. It gives every impression of being a large, tall building, and as far as we know, the only such structure, which was certainly used for exhibitions, was the Olympia, not far from Gloucester Street on the Esplanade adjoining the Bristol Hotel. This hall is featured for another of its uses, roller skating, as the current Picture of the week.
The premises which housed Willmore's in Gloucester Street were opposite what is now the hospital nurses' home, where there is still a row of houses. Willmore's was a little further down, where the long disappeared Chelsea Hotel was built. Clearly in 1900 there was much more open space behind these Gloucester Street properties, and some large trees which have long disappeared. E Hamilton Toovey, who took the photograph for the advertisement, was in business at 36 Royal Parade, just around the corner from Gloucester Street, from 1895 to 1914, further confirming the earliest possible dates for these two images. Further information was forthcoming after these images were published. The cycle business was started and run by Charles Henry Willmore. He appears in the 1900 Jersey Times Almanac at 13 Gloucester Street. In the 1891 census he was a boarder, already living at 13 Gloucester Street. He was a teacher of music, born in Liverpool, and aged 40. In 1901 he was head of a separate household at No 13, and a widow, with 14-year-old sons Charles and Herbert. He was a cycle dealer and they were his assistants. Strangely Charles' place of birth is given as England and Herbert's as Jersey. Charles Henry Willmore was married to Eliza Willmore née Poujol, daughter of Paul & Eliza Poujol. Eliza Willmore acquired 13 Ann Street in March 1870; she would have been at least 20 years old then, giving her a date of birth some time before March 1850 as she would have had to have attained her majority of 20 years to acquire the property as she did. She sold the property 18 years later in June 1888 for £226-18-9 (£160 receivable in cash, the remainder in rente) with Charles party to consent to his wife’s transaction as the law required at that time. Strangely there is no record of Eliza's birth, no trace of her family in the censuses and no record for her marriage, or for the birth of either of the sons.
24 October 2016
Roller skating
This superb picture was taken at the Olympia roller skating rink in 1905. We believe that this was also the venue for the feature picture last week of a cycling school stand at an exhibition in the early 1900s. The Olympia was at the western end of the Esplanade, next to the Bristol Hotel, which is on the opposite corner of Kensington Place to the Grand Hotel. The Bristol Hotel was only recently demolished to make way for a steel and glass office block. In the late 1900s and early 20th century the Olympia was the foremost venue in Jersey for entertainment of all types, exhibitions and roller skating.The Bristol Hotel was acquired by Lewis Marks on 20 June 1896 from Jane Le Feuvre, nee Le Gros, and was described as being 35 feet wide along its southern edge towards the Esplanade. In the same contract he acquired a separate parcel of land 58 ft 6in wide alongside the hotel for £1,642. On 23 November 1907 he transferred the entire site via a third party to a newly formed company The Bristol Hotel Company Limited and he appeared in Court to pass the contract as the company’s Governing Director. He was described as ‘son of Benjamin’ and was married to Theresa Leibman Leopold. The Leopolds have already featured in Jerripedia because in 1871 Sigmund Liebmann Leopold, Theresa’s brother, traded at No 46 King Street as a tobacconist, before moving in 1877 to No 13 King Street, which was bought by his wife. He remained there until his death in 1903. The Leopolds were sons and daughters of Isaac Leibman Leopold and the family first appeared in Jersey in 1864 when Lewis Leibman Leopold acquired the Albion Hotel, 10 Mulcaster Street. Lewis Marks also later owned the Don Inn in the Parade, so the whole family appears to have been in the hospitality business, as it is now known. Lewis Marks died at the Bristol Hotel on 27 November 1916 and 18 months later, on 27 July 1918 the Bristol Hotel Company sold the Olympia to Reginald John Blampied for £3,700 while retaining the hotel. The Olympia site wrapped around the rear of the Bristol Hotel and joined on to Kensington Place as well. On 14 May 1923 Reginald Blampied sold Olympia to Sir Jesse Boot, by then Baron Trent. It was sold by his attorneys, as it appears that Mr Blampied was probably insolvent and the attorneys had taken over his real and personal estate. The sale was for £6000. Jesse Boot’s four daughters later sold their shares in 70 Esplanade (still referred to as Olympia) in 1987. Returning to the picture above, it is noteworthy that the majority of those in the photograph are adults, whereas roller skating has more recently been an activity largely for children. And not only were they adults, but clearly quite affluent, judging by their clothes.
31 October 2016
Old harbour photograph
This picture has been on the site for some 18 months, but was not selected as Picture of the Week when it arrived - the competition must have been fierce. It was dated 1890 when it was sent to us, but we knew that it must have been taken considerably earlier than that, because it shows the Old Harbour in the foreground, stretching well beyond the line of the end of the Albert Harbour to the right. It is difficult to tell if the new public weighbridge is out of frame on the right, or yet to be built, which would date the photograph to earlier than 1877, but in any event it must have been taken before the upper end of the Old Harbour was filled in during 1884. We have recently had occasion to look at the photograph again, and examine more of the detail. This study has made us realise that the Albert Harbour, created behind the old North Quay when the new North Pier, later renamed the Albert Pier, in honour of Queen Victoria's consort, was constructed, is empty in this photograph. There are no ships on the new pier in the background, and nothing on the back of the North Quay, although that is to be expected because until its widening, it had a high wall on the side that had been open to the sea. Because there are no ships anywhere in the Albert Harbour and no sign of any activity on the new outer pier, we now believe that this picture may have been taken as early as 1853, when the Albert Pier, as it was renamed six years later, was completed. Those who are experts on maritime matters should be able to give approximate dates for the sailing vessels in the foreground. The most distinctive ship in the photograph is the paddle steamer moored against the pier on the right. We have searched through our extensive collection of images of boats which operated to Jersey and cannot identify this paddle steamer. It has a very distinctive, ornate upper wheel housing, and the single funnel, two relatively short masts, and very low superstructure should give further clues. If it was a passenger-carrying vessel it must have had very limited capacity, and was perhaps used between the islands and France, rather than across the Channel to the English coast. It certainly looks like the sort of paddle steamer which would have been operating in the middle of the 19th century. Can any of our regular visitors help? Please get in touch if you have any ideas which might support our view that this is one of the oldest surviving photographs of St Helier Harbour, although not quite as old as the two we featured on this page a few weeks back.
7 November 2016
Rozel Harbour by Tibbles
Dating old photographs can be a hit and miss affair, as we discovered last week with a photograph of St Helier Harbour which was much older than early indications suggested. The earlier they were taken, the more difficult it can be to establish an exact date, and the best that can often be estimated is a single decade. So it is with this picture of Rozel Harbour. We know that it was taken by Thomas Tibbles, a photographer who was in business at No 5 King Street in the 1870s. Our list of photographers operating in Jersey from 1840 onwards shows that he traded as Peirson Photographic Studio from 1876 to 1881, but almanac entries shows that he was in business at the property making the corner of King Street and Peirson Place as early as 1871. By 1881 he was an inmate at the General Hospital and the family census record shows him as head of household at 5 King Street, but he is described as an 'imbecile'. The photograph shown here was actually printed much smaller. It was a carte de visite, a term usually applied to portraits mounted on a card sized 64 mm (2.5 in) × 100 mm (4 in). However, these were the days long before postcards and high quality images of local scenes were much in demand by visitors to Jersey. By 1870 CDVs, as they are often called, had been the first choice for commercial photographers for over a decade, but they were then gradually supplanted by the somewhat larger 'cabinet photograph'. However, CDVs were still much in evidence, and this photograph was of that format. It was inscribed 'T Tibbles, Jersey', suggesting that it might have been taken and sold before he began trading as Peirson Photographic Studio, which would place it between 1870 and 1876, but that is only conjecture. This is one of the few photographs of Rozel in this era showing two vessels of any size in the harbour. Were they cargo vessels? It is difficult to say. They are larger than the oyster fishing vessels which operated from Rozel some 50 years earlier, when the jetty was constructed to give shelter to those boats which could not be accommodated at Gorey, the centre of the oyster fishing industry. Why did Thomas Tibbles take his picture at low tide, rather than at high water when the scene would arguably have been more attractive? Perhaps he wanted to show the wooden framework which lined the inner wall of the harbour to protect vessels moored against the jetty. The photograph also shows Rozel Barracks in the foreground, now rebuilt as a private house, but for many years a hotel, Le Couperon de Rozel, and on the headland in the background, the 19th century fortification Nez du Gouet, known as Rozel Fort, and also now a private residence.
14 November 2016
Edwardian cave visit
Victorians had a fascination with caves and the abundance of accessible caves along Jersey’s north coast was undoubtedly a factor in attracting visitors to come to Jersey as tourism grew in the last decades of the 19th century and the early 20th. They would not have been disappointed, because guided tours were offered to some of the most spectacular caves, including those at Greve de Lecq, which were particular popular because some concrete steps were constructed at the entrance to make access easier. The importance of this can be gauged from the clothes being worn by these tourists. This picture probably dates to the Edwardian era, when suits and hats were still de rigeur for the men, and ladies wore ankle-length skirts and spectacular hats – apparel hardly suited to scrambling over wet and slippery rocks, although a cave visit inevitably involved a certain amount of scrambling
21 November 2016
Edwardian bicycles
Cycling has become something of a theme on this page of late and we continue it with two super pictures from the early years of the 20th century. The picture above, taken in 1905, shows a lady with perhaps her three daughters at the junction of Cleveland Road and Havre des Pas. They have one of the latest bicycles of the time, possibly a Triumph, with a skirt guard which was often fitted to ladies’ bicycles then. There are many photos of women and bicycles around this period; it was the new form of transport women took to with considerable enthusiasm and was very much associated with increasing female emancipation. The picture below is an enlargement of a section of a photograph taken in about 1900 showing a much wider view of David Place. Two gentlemen have stopped for a chat, but the interesting thing is the frame of the bicycle. It appears to be one of a number of designs that makers experimented with before the industry settled on the diamond frame that was to become the standard.
28 November 2016
Victoria Avenue
Unfortunately the photograph above from about 1890 is not of the same quality as several of that vintage which we have featured on this page recently, but it still clear enough to illustrate some important features of the history of the area where it was taken. This is St Aubin's Bay and an artillery detachment of the Jersey Militia can be seen at practice, although quite what their guns were going to fire at is uncertain. The field guns are in a hollow behind the sea wall. Out of sight behind the photographer is the railway line between West Park and First Tower, which would soon have to be moved closer to the sea wall, because the hollow would be filled in and the new coastal road which would be called Victoria Avenue was constructed between 1895 and 1897. The newly completed road is shown in the photograph below, which was taken from Westmount. Working back from the sea wall, it shows a pedestrian promenade, the repositioned railway line, the new road, flanked on both sides by rows of bushes, which never survived the battering by wind and salt spray which this coastal location would inevitably inflict on them, and then the Lower Park. Closer to the camera is St Aubin's Road, which until the construction of Victoria Avenue was the only east-west route across St Aubin's Bay to Bel Royal. On the extreme right foreground can be seen the footbridge over the entrance to Horseshoe Quarry, where the Jersey Electricity Company are now building a giant sub-station. Although a hedge of sorts became established between Victoria Avenue and the Lower Park, it was never very attractive, and in the 1970s it was replaced with a low granite wall. Further to the west the gardens of properties fronting on the Avenue were separated from it with a granite wall surmounted by Victorian wrought iron railings, as can still be seen today
5 December 2016
Sand Street
This picture taken from Seaton Place in the south of the town of St Helier shows Seale Street on the left and Sand Street on the right. It was probably taken in the late 1950s, or early '60s, by an Evening Post photographer, and as the Google Street View below shows, some things have changed in the intervening years and some have not. The view up Seale Street towards the Town Hall, which is on the far end of the left side of the street, has altered very little, as has the unusual triangular building in the middle, still with a public telephone box outside. Sand Street, although relatively unchanged on the left as viewed in the pictures, is unrecognisable on the opposite side, mainly because of the construction of a multi-storey car park. One interesting feature is that, contrary to the general trend in recent years, the section of Sand Street in the foreground has changed from one-way to two-way to provide access to the car park entrance
12 December 2016
Halkett Place number change
This picture has been identified as 26 Halkett Place, but the shopfront looks remarkably similar to that shown below, although there has clearly been an extension to the shop on the right, with two extra bays added to the window. But the picture below is know to be of 43 Halkett Place, so how can they be the same building? There is no doubt that the two pictures are of the same building, making the corner of Halkett Place and Waterloo Street. The discrepancy in the numbers is easily explained by the fact that all properties in the street were renumbered in the last decade of the 19th century, when the short section of road between Hill Street and the junction of Halkett Place with King Street and Queen Street, formerly known as Morier Lane, was widened and incorporated into Halkett Place. J Pope Genge acquired the business of his brother-in-law George Bowring in 1884, selling out to Albert E Edgar in 1899. He overstruck his mark on those of the maker's of silverware imported from England, and Albert E Edgar continued this practice. Not long before the business was sold, all properties to the north of the junction had to be renumbered. It was not simply a question of adding 17 to all existing numbers, because the recent construction of a new, larger public market on the east side of the street caused complications. Previously some even numbers had been used for properties on the west side of the street, but the renumbering ensured that the usual pattern of odd numbers on one side and even on the other was maintained along the length of the street. The market fell between Nos 32 and 52, and these numbers were not allocated. At the other end of the street, opposite its junction with Burrard Street, Grove Place, which stretched up to Wesley Grove Methodist Chapel, was also renamed as part of Halkett Place, creating one of the longest continuous thoroughfares in the town. We have been compiling a history of all the properties along the original Halkett Place as part of our new initiative to trace the businesses which operated in the main streets of town and their owners. Go to 70 years of Halkett Place - Part 1 to see the first article on the history of the street, with links to three further articles. We have also just completed two similar articles on the history of Queen Street and are in the process of editing and adding to our histories of King Street properties
19 December 2016
St John's Hotel
These four pictures of St John's Hotel date from the 1920s, and are taken from a booklet of photographs published for the hotel. The booklet includes views of attractions close to the hotel, including Bonne Nuit Bay and Ronez Quarry.
The hotel viewed from across the road
The tea gardens
The parish church, war memorial and hotel in the background
The hotel dining room
