[Extracts from the St Peter Port list compiled by for the National Trust of Guernsey by C E B Brett (the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society) in 1975.]
... This fortunate prosperity seems to have continued, with
more ups than downs, throughout the l9th century. Tourists, convalescents
and summer visitors brought to Guernsey an early slice of the
tourist trade. Victor Hugo spent fourteen years in exile in St
Peter Port; as he remarked, 'On y envoie les poitrines délicates
d'Albion.' By degrees the trade in early potatoes, tomatoes, flowers
and vegetables, developed. A.C. Andros, writing in 1894, commented:
'It is wonderful and encouraging to see the enormous amount of
building which is going on ... the prosperity of the island seems
fairly gorged with Fat. Yes, Fat Guernsey is the word. Rich juices
flow from every pore ... I am told that half or three quarters
of One Million Sterling Pounds worth of Fat are exported from
this little flower-pot every year! ... Glass, glass, glass. At
every turn you see these little crystal palaces bursting their
sides with the fat produce of the vine, the tomato, the vegetables
luxuriating in profuse abundance, exhaling cheques...'
Since that date, Guernsey has continued, with ups and downs, to
prosper. The island was occupied, but not conquered, by the Germans
during the war of 1939-45. The post-war cash-crop seems to have
been merchant banking. Each decade has left its mark on the buildings
of St Peter Port, but it remains in essence, despite all the pressures
of the twentieth century, a Regency town. However, the pressures
are increasing; and more and more they are coming into conflict
with the unyielding constraints of geography....
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More modest two-storey Georgian stucco; the former with fox's
masks as terminals to its label mouldings; the latter with balcony,
bunches of grapes, and an odd Gothick window with crudely-shaped
animals at the dripstone terminals, and a wooden frame which incorporates
carvings of a dragon/crocodile, and of a pelican/swan? with young.
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An imposing group of five different blocks in slightly different
styles, all of white-painted stucco, a total of 35 bays in all;
of somewhat varied heights. The best part is the rounded two-storey
dormer in the centre of the oldest block - originally Grand Bosq,
the 'town residence of Eleazar le Marchant' in 1815; then West's
Family and Commercial Marine Hotel.
Refs: Berry, p.142; G. E. P. 6 June 1974; (Pl.147, 148)
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