A MARVELLOUS collection of old photos and postcard views of Jersey hotels have been provided by Graeme Harris.
The more modern of the images, all taken over the last 150-odd years, include hotels such as the Aberfeldy, the Coralie, Bay View and Les Arches . . . now bulldozed and visible only to the eye of memory.
The very oldest is the site of the present Grand Hotel – or rather, if the road in front is the Esplanade, on the site of the car park and present redevelopment of the roadside area in front of the hotel.
When this photo was taken, it was the Marine Hotel, and in tiny writing below the picture are the words ‘The Marine Hotel, previously called the Hotel Empress Eugenie, in about 1870’. The photo of the massed ranks of hotel porters and bellhops of the Grand Hotel looks as if it were taken a generation or so later.
Then come two more Edwardian establishments: the exterior and interior of the Hotel du Palais de Cristal, which was at 62 King Street – the address at which the branch of Boots exists these days.
The interior of the ‘Grand Café Parisien’ at the hotel looks interesting. A marketing company would pay a fortune these days to achieve a retro effect similar to the real thing shown here. Daly’s was in Mulcaster Street, and is now the Lamplighter pub.
Out of town, Lestang’s British Hotel on Gorey Pier (the present Moorings Hotel?), the Alexandra Hotel in St Peter, later St Peter’s Bars and now St Peter’s Country Inn, and the now demolished Abergeldie guesthouse in St Clement’s Road, which became a brothel for the Occupation forces.
There are also two holiday camps. The chalets at Château Plaisir, St Ouen’s Bay, look very regimented and severe, and the postcard showing the Grouville Holiday Camp was posted in 1936. ‘A topping crowd of people,’ writes the sender to the addressee in Suffolk.
We believe that this was the camp used to intern British forces caught in the Island at the start of the Occupation. The late Basil de Carteret, for example, remembered being sent here before being taken on the long journey via France to hard labour in Germany.
And back to town again for two postwar pictures: the original Beaufort Hotel, still resembling the private house from which it had been converted, and the Continental Hotel, which stood in St Saviour’s Road near the junction with La Motte Street.
These are a selection of the old pictures:nextpage
