This Is Guernsey

What do you do with an extremely tough but charmless concrete building that happens to be on your land? Chris Morvan looked into that widespread and largely disliked feature of our landscape, the German bunker, and found them being used for everything from museums to recording studios WHETHER we like it or not, Guernsey still bears the marks of the Occupation through the presence of German fortifications, which most of us refer to simply by the catch-all term ‘bunkers’. Notoriously tough and hard to get rid of and made of reinforced concrete sometimes two metres thick, they continue to exist, even though the general consensus would consistently throw up the word, ‘ugly’.

And they are everywhere. Any site boasting what we would normally consider ‘a nice view’ was seen by the German military as a good spot to put a gun that could blow a British landing party out of the water.

Delancey Park? Lovely spot for a picnic (as long as it’s not too windy) but also ideal for keeping an eye on the coast from the northern part of the island round to St Peter Port.

Jerbourg? Cliffs weren’t just for enjoying breathtaking scenery in the 1940s - they were vantage points from which murderous weapons could rule the area.

To the military historian, these fortifications are casemates, gun emplacements, resistance nests and so on. To the rest of us, they’re just bunkers and anyone born in or coming to Guernsey from the late 1940s onwards will have never known anything different. They are not attractive symbols of the island’s military past, as the pre-Martello towers are, nor mysterious ancient relics such as the dolmens, but they are here, often heavily disguised by nature and daunting, even if you have to admire their durability.

And if we can’t get rid of them, at least we can put them to good use.

Some have been refurbished and opened to the public: there’s the one overlooking Vazon at Albecq car park, for instance, which is open at certain times, as is the former German Naval Signals Headquarters, behind La Collinette Hotel.

Then there is the Aquarium at La Vallette, housed in a tunnel that is actually pre-Occupation but was used by the Germans. A couple of hundred yards away is La Vallette Underground Military Museum, based in German tunnels which contained huge fuel storage tanks (one of which is still there). The embankment in front of this is a relatively recent addition and the entrance to the museum is at road level.

Anyone interested in the building of the bunkers and their military use should read Ernie Gavey’s comprehensive book, A Guide to German Fortifications in Guernsey, and might also enjoy The Organisation Todt and the Fortress Engineers in the Channel Islands, written by Michael Ginns and published by the Channel Islands Occupation Society, which concentrates mainly on Jersey but contains information about Guernsey too.

This article takes a layman’s view of what we are left with and what we have done with them.

For the most part, the rule of thumb must be: if you see a large, grass-covered mound that is too smooth and symmetrical to be true, there is probably a bunker underneath. You can see them at the southern end of Bulwer Avenue and on L’Ancresse Common.

Drive along the coast road at Vazon heading south and just after the little kiosk at the Richmond end there is a two-storey house on the inland side with a kind of veranda at first-floor level that leads seamlessly into the grass of the common. There is a bunker under there and the owners of the house, former Deputy Bailiff Chris Day and his wife, Josie, use it as a kind of shed or store, a handy place to put things that you don’t want in the house.

The outfit responsible for building these concrete masses, the Organisation Todt, was based in what is now St John’s Residential Home in Saumarez Park, which may account for a particular interest it seems to have had in La Ruette des Fries, which runs from La Haye du Puits towards Le Guet and is peppered with (mainly small) German fortifications. True, this splendidly off-the-beaten-track area boasts a commanding view of the west coast and its potential landing places for Allied troops, but the number of fortifications at and around the top end of the lane is remarkable.

Alan and Eve Weston built their bungalow there in 1961 on a plot containing several bunkers. ‘It didn’t bother me at all,’ said Mrs Weston. ‘I grew up just around the corner during the war, so I was used to bunkers. When the kids were young, they cleared out the entrance to the one in the front garden [a former ammunition store] and used to play in it. All the bunkers along here used to be linked by underground passages.’

Mr Weston, a recently retired grower, showed me the one in the back garden that they use partly as a shed. ‘We bought the plot from Jurat Le Tissier, who I used to work for. He owned the vinery across the road and all this land too. He converted this one into a reservoir for the vinery, holding 70,000 gallons of water. We used to pump water into it from a borehole and gravity would take it across the road.’

Nearby in La Percee is a hexagonal house, Les Hauts Courtils, which is built smack on top of a gun emplacement. Dating from 1958, it was bought in 1970 by Barbara Hunter and her late husband, John. The Hunters planned to put an extra storey on top, which would revolve, but the IDC didn’t like the idea. In fact, said Mrs Hunter, ‘Tom Ogier [then IDC president] told me that if we had been asking permission to build it then, he would have said no, because it was an eyesore.’

Such an opinion is, of course, subjective, and many people would regard it as an interesting building, rather than a blot on the landscape.

Just a few yards down the hill towards Cobo is the home of Harold Girard, who still lives, with his wife, Joyce, in the house where he was as a youngster during the Occupation. His property once hosted a gun perched on a mound of rock and the story of these fortifications began when the family returned from morning service at church one Sunday. ‘We found a huge gun outside the kitchen,’ he recalled. ‘And a German soldier told us he wanted our shed immediately so they could sleep in it. So as soon as we had had our lunch, we had to clear it out.’

The Germans built the gun emplacement on the mound, along with a wooden hut as a cooking and eating unit and a small concrete accommodation block, which still stands and has been used over the years as a store for Mr Girard’s business as a grower. ‘I’ve seen it full of potatoes,’ he said, before pointing at the ceiling, which is showing signs of decay. ‘Nothing lasts forever,’ he added, with the merest hint of satisfaction in his voice. ‘When you’ve got steel in reinforced concrete, it starts to rust - you can’t stop it. It’s starting to break out now.’

Outside it was a balmy and serene day in this idyllic area, but during the Occupation it was far from peaceful, with soldiers going about their business. ‘There was barbed wire everywhere,’ said Mr Girard. He pointed to a huge block of German concrete at the foot of the mound, put there as a buttress, because the impact of the gun was destabilising the hill.

There was even talk at one point of demolishing the house, the prospect of which distressed the family greatly.

‘There were a lot of prayers said about that,’ Mr Girard explained. ‘And then the captain who wanted to demolish it was sent to Alderney and the one who replaced him said there was no need to knock down the house. I think there was the hand of God in that.’

At the Oberlands in St Martin’s, there is another concentration of bunkers, the largest and most impressive being what is now the Civil Protection (formerly Civil Defence) Unit, owned by the States and designed as a kind of command centre to keep the island going in the event of nuclear attack. In these post-Cold War days, when such a threat is deemed to be much less, the bunkers - there are two identical ones, linked by a long tunnel - have switched emphasis and now act as headquarters for volunteers in case of a disaster. Although in need of upgrading, they house an operations room, complete with long, boardroom-style table, sleeping accommodation and a small BBC radio studio complete with a turntable for playing LPs, rather than the CD player one would expect.

Just along the road, sunk into the ground behind a farm, is the former kitchen building for the big Oberlands bunkers. Now run as a recording studio and the office of his business by musician and guitar tutor Mark Guillou, this takes advantage of the sound-retaining qualities of thick concrete walls and roof.

With modern communications that the occupying forces could not even have dreamed about, Mark teaches people all over the world via the internet. The interior has been specially fitted out to enhance its acoustic properties, with wood panelling and carpeting on the walls, topped by a false ceiling. ‘There is no damp at all,’ said Mark, ‘although that was a worry at first and I still run a dehumidifier.’ He pointed to a metal mixing desk which has been there as long as he has - eight years - and observed: ‘Not a mark [of rust] on it.’

Mark’s is one of at least three bunkers used as studios and several more perform a similar function as much sought-after rehearsal rooms. Just around the corner is Stage FX studios, run by Simon Ellis. Formerly the den of local musical prodigy and now established London musician/ producer Tim Bran, this place has a distinguished past that probably peaked in the 1960s and 70s when a musician, arranger and composer called Barry Gray installed a studio here for his ongoing projects, including recording demos of theme tunes and incidental music for the TV series, Thunderbirds, Fireball XL-5, Captain Scarlett and the like.

The majority of bunkers have been used for something or other over the years, most just for storage. One at Pleinmont is a clubhouse for the Green Man Motorcycle Club. Some contain fireworks, notably one in St Saviour’s, where Dave Malledent, whose Standard Fireworks Channel Islands Display team has been responsible for many big official displays, keeps his highly inflammable/explosive goods. For obvious reasons, Mr Malledent doesn’t want to be specific about where it is.

And then there is the fabled Mirus battery at La Houguette, once the site of fearsome 30.5cm Russian ships’ guns capable of firing not just at targets off the west coast, but right across the island to those out of sight on the other side.

In number four battery at the Mirus site, Phil Page’s company Battletec organises war games with Airsoft models commonly referred to as BB guns, in and around the bunker, which Mr Page describes as ‘the best piece of kit we’ve got’.

Article posted on 26th May, 2007 - 12.00am