The Channel IslandsMorris, Joseph E. (Joseph Ernest)
History
The Channel Islands
Morris, Joseph E. (Joseph Ernest)
Channel Islands
St. Brelade's Bay, nearly two miles across, if we measure from Le Fret
to La Moye Point, is perhaps the most gracious on the Jersey coast.
The church has a very picturesque outline, with a saddle-backed tower
like that of St. Sampson's, in Guernsey. It was admirably restored a
few years ago, when the plaster was stripped from the vaulted roof
that is common to most old churches in the Channel Islands, and is
probably analogous to the vaulted roofs of the fortified churches of
Pembrokeshire. Mr. Bicknell, however, is wrong in saying that "the
interior walls ... look very dignified in their original condition."
Nothing is more certain than that medieval churches--at any rate in
cases where the walls are of rubble masonry--were plastered, and
commonly covered with wall-paintings. Such plastering and old
wall-painting may still be found at St. Brelade's in the Chapelle ès
Pécheurs, or Fishermen's Chapel, that remains in the parish
churchyard. These, according to Mr. Keyser, represent parts of two
Dooms or Final Judgments, Our Lord before Herod, an Annunciation, the
Assumption of the Virgin, and the Offering of the Magi. They probably
date from the fifteenth century, and the attendant makes them visible
by the simple expedient of throwing the light on them with a mirror.
The existence of this old chapel side by side with the parish
church--the same thing seems formerly to have happened at
Grouville--is a subject of curious inquiry. Chantrey chapels were
sometimes built in churchyards--there is still a fourteenth-century
example at Carew, in Pembrokeshire, and there was formerly one at
Newdigate, in Surrey--but these would be generally of later date;
whereas the Fishermen's Chapel is supposed to date from quite the
beginning of the twelfth century. In the grounds of the St. Brelade's
Hotel is an ancient cross of the kind that is stated by Mr. Bicknell
formerly to have "stood at nearly every place where four cross roads
met in the island."
[Illustration: THE NEEDLE ROCK, GRÈVE AU LANÇON, JERSEY.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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