By chance – or (if the reader will excuse the pun) by a fluke – Hugh brought great wealth on to his own Island farming community as a result of planting the first Jersey Royals.
This testimonial was found by the late Jurat John Vint in a collection of unconsidered objects, and passed from him into the ownership of his son and daughter-in-law, Graham and Catherine Vint. The couple have recently relocated to the UK, and out of concern for the long-term future of this historic testimonial, have lent it the Société so that it can be put on display.
The story of how the Jersey Royal was first planted has become almost a part of Island folklore: in 1880 (apparently) a Jersey potato grower called Hugh de la Haye was walking near the Harbour, and saw, in the window of a potato merchant’s store, three comical looking potatoes with unusually high numbers of ‘eyes’ or embryo shoots – one had as many as 16.
The potatoes were being shown off as an amusing curiosity, and he asked to take them home with him. He did so, and showed them to his friends at a farmer’s dinner held following ploughing with ‘la grand’ charrue’ (the big plough). During the evening, Hugh showed the potatoes to the assembled company, and it was suggested to him that he should cut them up so that each eye could be planted singly.
He did so in his field overlooking Bellozanne Valley. When the small crop was ready, he dug up the plants, boiled some of them, and found the taste much superior to his commercial farming crop. So he saved the rest as seed potatoes, harvesting again the next season, and gave some of the crop to his friends as seed for their use. Within four years he had harvested enough to be able to exhibit them in the windows of the French-language newspaper, La Nouvelle Chronique. From then on the so-called ‘Jersey Fluke’ potato was being sold commercially.
This was the high tide of British Imperialism in the late Victorian era, when things good or notable were apt to be christened ‘royal’ in respectful tribute to the Queen. So very soon the Jersey Fluke had become the Royal Jersey Fluke, and, for the past 100 years or so, the Jersey Royal. It could just as easily have been christened ‘the Victoria’, like the plum, the London railway station, or the newly created avenue along St Aubin’s Bay.
It was only in the early 19th century that potatoes first became a major commercial crop. Before then, despite the fact that they had first been brought to Europe from South America by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595, they were slow to be accepted either as an agricultural crop or as a vegetable fit for human (as opposed to animal) consumption. Eating potatoes was definitely non-U, certainly not as socially acceptable as delicious parsnips. ‘Grow potatoes in your worst ground’, wrote the 17th century diarist and keen gardener John Evelyn.
In the Jersey travel guidebook written by Thomas Quayle in 1818, he states that when the potato first appeared in the Island, perhaps a century or so before his time, it was ‘an object of curiosity more than otherwise . . . a dirty and ill-cared-for crop, and largely used for fattening hogs and stock for market.’ The tubers were ‘large, coarse, and knotty’.
But the crops, planted in Jersey’s rich and fertile (and pest-free) soil thrived, and, since Islanders have never been slow in recognising commercial potential, it was being grown and exported to the UK by sailing ship in the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Six hundred tons were exported in 1807, and by 1811 the export tonnage had doubled. Exported Jersey potatoes went to Portugal, to Gibraltar and even to Brazil (probably with salted cod) and Guernsey. But as the crop began to be grown more intensively, so disaster struck, in the form of the potato blight fungus. This untreatable disease caused terrible catastrophe in Ireland in the 1840s – and in June 1845 the blight appeared in Jersey.
It did not cause such havoc in Jersey as it did in Ireland, although not for the last time many farmers wondered if there was any future in the potato export trade for them. Things struggled on for a decade or more, until, in 1858, a St Ouen farmer called John Le Caudey decided that the way forward was to grow early varieties on south-facing slopes. Not only would Jersey’s mild climate mean that export from the Island would be in advance of crops grown elsewhere, but also by being grown so early in the year, the crops would not be subject to the worst effects of blight.
The first export crop of ‘Jersey early potatoes’ was shipped off by steamer in June 1859 – ‘early’ then being a relative term when contrasted with the ‘earliness’ of potatoes in modern times. The idea was a brilliant success, and tonnage rose from 4,000 tons in 1864 to 28,000 tons 16 years later.
Le Caudey also pioneered the use of guano, the first ‘additive fertiliser’ made from the droppings of seabirds, collected from rocks along the western coast of South America.
In trials in Jersey conducted in 1867, it was shown that a crop grown with guano was 50 per cent greater in volume than a crop grown alongside without guano. Not surprisingly, the use of guano caught on quite quickly.
In 1870 John Le Caudey received, in recognition of his efforts of saving Jersey as a potato producer, a purse of 150 guineas, a gold watch and a testimonial. In his turn, Hugh de la Haye was presented in 1892 with the illuminated address – the one now on loan to the Société – and a purse of golden sovereigns.
Hugh de la Haye’s testimonial is signed by Philip Hanley – who farmed at Pied du Côtil, off Mont Cochon, near Hugh’s own Bushy Farm in the Ruelle Vaucluse – and by Francis Bois, the St Saviour Deputy who was a leading Island statesman during the Great War, and who secured an Army contract for the supply of Jersey potatoes to the troops serving on the Western front.
It is nice to know that Jersey farmers were able to profit from this advantageous contract, and that for many soldiers, their last dinner before being shot would have included delicious Jersey Royals. As for Hugh de la Haye, those golden sovereigns were the only financial recompense he received for developing the Jersey Royal potato, and he probably spent the money on repairing his stables, which had recently been burnt down in a fire.
But when exactly did he develop the Jersey Royal? Yes – we all know it was in 1880, don’t we? However, in the obituary of him that was printed in the Nouvelle Chronique de Jersey on his death on 2 September 1906, it mentions that he first exhibited the ‘Royal Jersey Fluke’ at the Channel Islands Exhibition in 1871.
So, is the date always quoted for the development of the Jersey Royal wrong? Or did the newspaper get it wrong? (Such things have occasionally been known to happen.) Quoting from the entry on Hugh de la Haye from Balleine’s Biographical Dictionary: ‘He never made any effort to exploit for his own advantage his lucky discovery. And when ill health compelled him to give up his farm. His income was very small. In old age he spent most of his time on a seat in Victoria Avenue smoking and chatting with friends.’
In contrast to these modern times, when corporate entities are quick to transform the fruits of the earth into profitable patented property, the life and career of the gentle and unassuming Hugh de la Haye is surely something of a moral example.
