History & Heritage

• Bertrand du Guesclin

  Bertrand du Guesclin: The Black Dog of Brittany IN the main square of the Breton town of Dinan there...

• Branchage

  The branchage: Modern methods and traditional skills help to ensure that Jersey’s hedges are k...

• Cider apples

  AN apple a day may keep the doctor away, but the rhyme may not count when the apple comes in the for...

• Clameur de Haro

  The Channel Islands are the only place where this Norman custom of crying for justice still survives...

• Constitutional history

  Timeframe for an Island constitution 1066 Jersey becomes an English possession because it is part of...

• Corbière lighthouse

  COMPARED with structures such a the Eddystone light off Plymouth or Scotland’s Bell Rock, Corb...

• David Bruce

  WHO was responsible for founding the Jersey Militia? Indirectly, it was David Bruce, otherwise known...

• Don Pero Niño

  IN 1403 a truce between England and France was broken when English pirates plundered merchant ships ...

• Durrell

  MOUNTAIN Chickens and Livingstone’s Fruit Bats may not be species particular to Jersey but the...

• Eustace the Monk

  ONE of the more colourful characters associated with 1204 and Jersey’s 800-year links with the Eng...

• Family history

  People with roots in the Channel Islands live all over the world, and are often interested in tracin...

• Finance industry

  THE thrifty Jerseyman, who understands the value of money, works hard and spends wisely, is an Islan...

• George Carteret

  AT a time when the Island is celebrating its 800-year bond with the Crown it is appropriate to remem...

• German Occupation

  For nearly five years, Jersey was under German rule and, along with the rest of the Channel Islands,...

• Giant cabbage

  FIELDS of giant cabbages are not something you often see in Jersey any more, but a century ago they ...

• Glass church

  THE exterior of St Matthew’s Church at Millbrook scarcely merits a second glance. Its rectilin...

• Gorey Harbour

  THE beach has been used for loading cargo since at least the Middle Ages. In 1685 Dumaresq wrote tha...

• Granite

  JERSEY is not exclusively a granite island, but the masses of this hard crystalline rock dominate th...

• Harry Vardon

  ‘Don’t play too much golf. Two rounds a day are plenty.’ It may well have been thi...

• Howard Davis

  A FLOWER garden, playground, concert hall and sun-trap, Howard Davis Park is the one slice of quiet ...

• Hundred Years War

  THE Hundred Years War between England and France put the Channel Islands in the front line of a conf...

• Jèrriais

  For 1,000 years Jersey has had a language of its own. Known to anglophones as Jersey Norman-French a...

• Jersey flag

  THE JERSEY flag is as much a mystery as it is a cause for debate and disagreement. Once referred to ...

• Jersey Royals

  IT was just a meat and two veg dinner round at farmer Hugh de la Haye’s house, and it made his...

• La Cotte

  IF you stand on the headland overlooking Ouaisné today you will enjoy a fine view of sands stretchi...

• La Hougue Bie

  FOR generation after generation, the people of Jersey gazed at the strange mound rising abruptly fro...

• Legends

  Pictures of ghosts and witches are easily conjured up in Jersey. The ancient lanes overhung with veg...

• Lillie Langtry

  Emilie Charlotte Le Breton may have been born in Jersey in 1853 and buried in St Saviour’s chu...

• Maistre Wace

  IN the Royal Square, near the Old Library, is a plaque commemorating one of the first Jerseymen who ...

• Napoleonic defences

  SCATTERED around the coast of the Island are a series of towers which once protected Jersey’s shor...

• Orchid Foundation

  TUCKED away down a side road near Victoria Village is the Eric Young Orchid Foundation, an instituti...

• Ormers

  IN California they are called abalone, in New Zealand paua, in South Africa perlemoen and in Japan a...

• Parishes

  JERSEY’S 12 parishes date back almost a millennium and are a defining characteristic of the Is...

• Philippe de Carteret

  THE civil strife between the houses of Lancaster and York known as the Wars of the Roses did not lea...

• Railways

  TODAY there are only old bridges and nature walks left to remind Islanders of the steam trains that ...

• Railway walk

  IN the United Kingdom, where the railway line closures begun in the 1960s by Dr Richard Beeching hav...

• Royal Mace

  DESPITE taking the great-est pride in its individuality, its high level of independence and its sepa...

• Surfing

  THE surf has been up around Jersey for eighty years now and at one stage the Island was the surf cap...

• The Jersey Cow

  Jersey seems to have been a cow-exporting Island for centuries ÷ Islanders emigrating to the Americ...

• Valleys

  MOST people would say that the geography of Jersey is dominated to the exclusion of almost all else ...

• Violet Bank

  BACK in the 1980s the Violet Bank, that vast area of rock, shingle and sand off the Island’s s...

• Vraic

  THE Jersey Royal potato and the once-famous Jersey tomato offer ample proof that the land of this Is...

• Wonders

  THERE is one traditional form of Jersey food that no summer fair would be complete without ÷ the Je...