May Day in Alderney
20th April 2015
From the Guernsey Monthly Magazine, September 1891, p. 382.
Library Book Collection
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
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
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
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.
Strangers, vagabonds, and other disreputable characters
From an Order of the Royal Court of Easter 1726.
A peep into the past: the East Coast, 1926
By D De La Rue, from the Guernsey Free Churchman, December, 1926, pp. 82-3. 'A few months ago the Editor was conversing with one of the octogenarians of our town and island, on the White Rock. The conversation revolved around the many changes that had taken place in the Harbour and its surroundings.' The illustration is taken from a local novel in the Library's collection, Mrs Carey Brock's moral but entertaining tale, Clear shining after rain, published in 1871.