Library Book Collection

John Shipp, 1798

22nd May 2015

John Shipp, Memoirs &c, London: T Fisher Unwin, 1890, Priaulx Library Collection

Memoirs of the extraordinary military career of John Shipp, late a lieut. in His Majesty's 87th regiment. Shipp (1784-1834) twice won a commission from the ranks before the age of thirty-two, and his memoirs were extremely popular, being published in four editions. He writes about his time at Guernsey as a young man in Chapter III. He was fourteen or so, and lead fifer in the 22nd Cheshire Regiment of Foot at the time; the regiment was in the island from 1798 to 1799 (they were inspected here on 14 August 1799.)

The Warning, 1922

13th May 2015

A dolmen from Bellamy's Pictorial Directory and Strangers' Guide of 1843, Priaulx Library collection

Edith Carey, in The Guernsey Society Report and Transactions for 1922 (pp. 89-90), quotes the following mystical occurrence from a 1922 article in Blackwood's Magazine, 'A Welsh Ride,' by Edmund Vale:

May Day in Alderney

20th April 2015

From the Guernsey Monthly Magazine, September 1891, p. 382.

Pierre Silvieux, 1705

15th April 2015

'How Alderney lost its minister in 1705.' From A N Le Cheminant's A Christmas Box of Channel Gems, in the Library's Channel Islands' Pamphlets XIV (Goss.-LeFebvre), pp. 29 ff. This 1700 law remained unrepealed, in Sark at least, and continued to have repercussions into the 20th century!

Osmond de Beauvoir Priaulx's original bequest

10th April 2015

Osmond de Beauvoir Priaulx's personal bookplate

I want nothing called after my name, and I will give nothing to those who already have much. .... If the money be not properly administered, better it had been thrown in the sea.

Family photographs

23rd March 2015

The index of photographs in From our family albums, Book Three (2012), edited by Julie Hargetion and Mary Vidamour of the Société Guernesiaise. Thise book and its two companion volumes may be viewed by visitors to the Library, but permission for reproduction of the photographs can only be obtained by going through the books' compilers, the Family History Section of the Société Guernesiaise, from whom copies of the books may also be purchased.

St Saviour's Church damaged in a storm: January 1658

St Saviour's Church from Bellamy's Guide of 1843 in the Priaulx Library collection

Tonnerre, foudre et orage. From Pierre Le Roy's Notebook, edited and transcribed by the Reverend G Lee in 1893 under the auspices of the Guille-Alles Library. The woodcut is by Dr Thomas Bellamy, from his Guide of 1843.

Taking care of the records 17th-century style: Chief Pleas April 1658

An Ordinance of 19 April, 1658.

Jordan de la Chapelle, 1235

A petition from the time of Henry III. Robert de la Rosière, Jordan and his wife are wrongly accused. The King gets angry with Dreux de Barentin, who had recently been appointed Warden of the Isles, and who became notorious through his subsequent oppressive behaviour.

My little brothers: Christmas with Victor Hugo, 1862

Hugo and the children from Delalande, Priaulx Library Collection

From the Gazette de Guernesey, Saturday 27 December, a report on Hugo's Christmas party for deprived children; a letter from Hugo to his wife, whose idea it all was in the first place; and another to the French publisher Castel, in which he plans to donate the proceeds of a new book of drawings to his poor Guernsey protégés. The editor of the Gazette at this time was Hugo's friend and disciple, Guernseyman Henri Marquand. The photograph accompanying this article is dated 1868. It was taken in March by Arsène Garnier. (Another very similar set of photographs was taken by a Jerseyman with a studio in London, named Henry Frankland, in February 1868; the Library has a photographic plate of one of these iconic images.) This particular photograph was popular with the public at the time; they could buy it in the local shops.Article by Dinah Bott.

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