Les Alpes

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Historic Jersey buildings


Les Alpes, St Martin


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Property name

Les Alpes

Other names

Location

Grande Route de Faldouet, St Martin

Type of property

Ornate Victorian country house

Valuations

Sold for £840,000 and £875,000 in 2003 - this may have represented a division of the property; £875,000 in 2014 and £1.6 million in 2017

Families associated with the property

  • Messervy: The home of two Constables of St Martin, named Thomas William Messervy, the last of whom became Deputy in the States for St Martin
  • Touzel

Datestones

  • TMS ♥ MDB 1741 - For Thomas Messervy and Marie Dolbel [1]

Historic Environment Record entry

Listed building

A high quality example and good survival of a well proportioned and highly ornate three-bay, two-storey house of the late Victorian era. Two storey wing to the east.

Four-year-old Viv Pallot on her first day at the school

School

​Les Alpes was for 44 years from 1933 home to a private school with just one teacher: Headmistress Elsie Touzel. She taught pupils ranging from four years old up to leaving age, all in a single classroom. Miss Touzel began her teaching career in 1905, aged 16, at Les Fonds, Fauvic, Grouville, moving to Les Alpes in 1933. A broken hip forced her to close the school in 1977 but she continued with private tuition until she finally retired on 30 September 1980, aged 90. She has been featured in The Guinness Book of Records for the longest teaching career (75 years, spanning three generations). Elsie Touzel died on 30 April 1984, aged 94 - just three days after the death of her older sister, Ada (fondly known as Little Miss Touzel) who ran the household. Neither sister married.


Notes and references

  1. Although the interpretation of this stone by OJH, copied in the Datestone Register, as being for Thomas Messervy and Marie Dolbel, married in St Martin in 1705, would seem obvious, the problem is that there is no record of this marriage. It was George Messervy, son of George, who married Marie Dolbel in that year, and the register entry is unlikely to have been a mistake because there are subsequent records of the baptisms of the children of George and Marie in the same parish. George and Marie did have a son, Thomas, in 1714, and the question arises as to whether this stone could have been erected to mark work being done on the property when Thomas and his mother were living there after George's death, which is believed to have been in 1725
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