This week’s anniversaries range from a small island being put on the market to a royal visit celebrating liberation, the confiscation of radios during the occupation, and the end of Guernsey’s railway. Together they show how the Bailiwick’s transport, communication and even its very land have been shaped by war, commerce and ceremony.
In 1983, the 24-year lease of Jethou was put on the market by Lady Hayward, following the death earlier that year of her husband, Sir Charles Hayward. The 50-acre property, including a four-bedroom house, was offered for offers over £500,000 and described by The Guardian as “a complete tax haven not even liable to Guernsey taxation”. It was the third private Channel Island to come on the market in two months, after Brecqhou and Lihou, reflecting a brief moment when such islands were being treated as investment opportunities.
Sir Charles had been Jethou’s tenant since 1971, having bought the lease and everything on it for £91,000 with his wife. The island’s value rose more than five-fold in twelve years, partly due to the extensive improvements they made to the early nineteenth-century house. Unlike Herm, Jethou was never required to be open to the public, and the Haywards’ arrival ended the previous practice of welcoming visitors. The remaining lease was bought in February 1984 by a tenant who chose to remain anonymous.
Less than a month after the liberation of the Channel Islands, King George VI and his wife, later the Queen Mother, visited Guernsey as part of a multi-destination trip to welcome the only occupied British territory back into the kingdom. After arriving in Jersey, they flew by Dakota to Guernsey, where German prisoners of war were still on the island clearing mines. The prisoners had been asked to make ammunition for a royal salute and, unusually, agreed to do so, using captured German weapons for the guns, though they were kept well away from the royal party itself.
The king and queen toured the west coast and northern parishes, then met Bailiff Victor Carey and Dame Sibyl Hathaway of Sark in Candie Gardens. The Bailiff thanked them for liberation and post-liberation supplies, and the king responded that he could already see evidence of hard work repairing enemy damage and restoring the island’s well-being. Although they spent only three hours in Guernsey, this was considerably longer than Queen Victoria’s impromptu 1846 visit, and they flew back to Northolt in the same Dakota, escorted by Spitfires.
German forces initially allowed residents of Guernsey and Jersey to keep their radio sets for the first few months of the occupation, but this changed after British commandos Hubert Nicolle and James Symes came ashore and became trapped on the island. The authorities then demanded the surrender of every radio, collecting around 8,000 sets in Guernsey, though they returned them a few months later in December 1940. As the war turned against the occupiers, the Germans reversed this decision and on 8 June 1942 published notices in local papers that every radio set in the Bailiwick was to be confiscated.
Stiff penalties were threatened for those who did not comply, yet many residents hid their radios or built simple crystal sets using wire and telephone earpieces. Almost half of the radios discovered at this later stage were such crystal sets, which became especially common after D-Day when signals from liberated France could be received easily. The most famous use of illicit radios was the production of GUNS, the Guernsey Underground News Sheet, which compiled BBC news and was passed around the island until its originators were betrayed and sent to prison in Germany.
Guernsey’s railway, which had run since 20 February 1892, ceased operations on 9 June 1934, with work to lift the tracks beginning just two days later. It had been unable to compete with the far lower running costs of motor-powered buses, which had been operating in the island since 1909. Over its lifetime, the company invested in nineteen maroon-and-cream carriages that often looked like double-decker buses and ran on a line between St Peter Port and St Sampson.
The States of Guernsey decided to take over the permanent tramway and fixtures and cancel the concession granted to the Guernsey Railway Company in 1877. The cost of removing the track and returning the road to usable condition was initially borne by the States but recouped from the company over the next two decades. From then on, the “railway” company concentrated on running buses instead. Guernsey Railway Co Ltd itself continued until December 1980, when it was taken over by Guernseybus, while today the only traditional railway in the Channel Islands is in Alderney.
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