Descriptions of the islands

A Farmer's Vacation, 1873

Guernsey, from an article in the influential American publication, Scribner's Monthly Magazine, September 1873; the article is one of a series eventually brought together as a book, A Farmer's Vacation, by George Wearing, published in the same year. Interest in the exportation of Guernsey cattle to North America and their management was bringing significant numbers of US farmers or their agents to Guernsey in this period. Wearing had first visited Jersey, to compare their agricultural procedures. Below is the Couture Water Lane in St Peter Port, admired by the author.

The Season in Alderney

From The Ladies' Companion and Monthly Magazine, 1868. Old-fashioned and full of Latin tags but more fun that you might think. 'For be it remarked here, that the Alderney girls age remarkably fast, and very probably the charmer who is carrying on a conversation with you, and parrying all your flirting and causerie, with all the nerve and steadiness of five-and-twenty, is, after all, only adorned by the petitionary grace of sweet seventeen.'

Guernsey people

By Frank Feather Dally. Guernsey folk love a good funeral.

A Farmer's Vacation, 1873: Sark

Baker's Valley, Sark, in 1880, from Priaulx Library Collection

From George Wearing's A Farmer's Vacation, 1873, pp. 231 ff. The photographs are from the Library collection; that of the Seigneurie in Sark is by Thomas Singleton and dates from c. 1875; above is Baker's Valley in around 1880. 'The population of the island is less than six hundred souls, and of these over ten per cent are confirmed drunkards.'

The Moie de Mouton and the unfortunate sheep of Sark, 1854

Postcard of the Moie de Mouton, Priaulx Library Collection

The Moie de Mouton cave, by a credulous R. Ellis, from the book Rambles among the Channel Islands, by a naturalist, 1854.

Herm

From Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, 1831.

Four-horned ewes and six-horned rams, 1779

From the New Universal Traveller, Containing a Full and Distinct Account of All the Empires, Kingdoms, and States, in the Known World, by Jonathan Carver, 1779.

The Guernsey farmhouse and cottage, 1846

Old Guernsey Kitchen, Thomas Grut, Priaulx Library Collection

Continuing the extract from the Dublin University Magazine, 1846. The Guernsey diet and the lower classes' utter lack of musicality.

Alderney and Sark, 1838: under a bright sun, there is beauty everywhere

Chamber’s Journal, 1838. 'Both Alderney and Serk enjoy an excellent climate, and on that account a few residents, chiefly retired officers, have fixed their abode in these islands. But the luxuries of life are too scarce to render the small Channel isles ever the chosen abode of the wealthy.' 'It may seem strange to say of any portion of the British dominions, that reading is unknown: such, however, is the case in Alderney.'

L'Archipel de la Manche

Children, 1929, Priaulx Library Collection

We asked the question: who wrote the following and when? 'Cross a ravine, go down and across Mill Street, into a sort of fissure between two tall houses, climb up a narrow and interminable set of tortuously winding steps with loose paving stones, and you find yourself in a Bedouin village; hovels, cracks in the roads, dirt alleys, burnt gables, ruined houses, deserted rooms, windowless and doorless with grass growing inside them, beams across the road, ruins blocking the way, here and there an inhabited cottage, little naked boys, pale women; you would think you were in Zaatcha.' And gave you a clue: the original is in French. [By Dinah Bott]

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