This Is Guernsey

If the States agrees, Fort Richmond could soon be sold on the open market and a spectacular building could have a new lease of life. We take a look inside - and chart the unique property’s chequered history IT SITS on top of a small hill, barely visible from the coast road as you drive past. To get to it, you have to turn into the lane roughly opposite the old Richmond Shopper, then climb the rugged access road between some houses on the left. It is, in many ways, a typical site for a fortification: idyllic on a calm summer’s day, but bleak and unwelcoming when the wind howls and rain lashes it during the darker days.

Fort Richmond is in such a prominent position, overlooking the south end of Vazon and the northern part of Perelle, that in the days when invasion from the sea was a real possibility it would have been a natural place to build a fortification. There is archaeological evidence of activity there from Neolithic times.

In the 18th century a battery was sited there, with four 20-pounder guns and a permanent magazine. It was named after Charles Lennox, the Duke of Richmond, Master General of the Ordnance, who visited Guernsey in 1785.

Wooden huts were built in 1803 to house the soldiers who manned the battery, but with the prospect of invasion waning it was neglected and a military survey in 1842 described Richmond Battery as unserviceable. Only 10 years later, however, a complete review of Guernsey’s defences recommended the building of a new defensive artillery barracks, with similar work to be carried out at Fort Hommet and Fort Le Marchant.

Fort Richmond now boasted four large guns, with these being upgraded in 1878 to two 64-pounder shell-firing weapons.

The barracks, completed in 1856, was set in a dry ditch, which protected the ground floor from gunfire.

As is the way of these things, by 1900 the fort was obsolete, longer-range guns at other locations having rendered it unnecessary. As time goes by, a once-serious military installation where the atmosphere crackled with matters of life or death comes to look almost quaint.

In 1908 the States looked into the subject of decaying forts, Richmond included, but didn’t do anything. In a letter to the Guernsey Evening Press in 1967 a reader recalled the fort having been used as a tea room in the early years of the century, run by Mr and Mrs Patterson.

In 1914, as war broke out, the UK government took control of it, just in case. Eight years later the States bought it back for £590 and it was used for housing.

Quaint or not, down the years the site remained in the thoughts of those charged with defending the island. The German occupying forces during the Second World War made their distinctive mark on it in the higgledy-piggledy way they had with a few tons of concrete and an old fortification.

Today it is a ramshackle, sorry sight that even the most glorious of summer days cannot disguise: lovely spot, certainly, but, goodness, it needs some work.

It was not always thus. Long after its military days were over, the fort attracted interest from both the public and the States. It seems that every couple of years somebody has come up with an idea to put it to good use. The notion of a maritime centre was mooted at one time, while only a couple of years ago it was suggested that an arts centre would be a good use.

Now the States are talking of putting it up for sale. So what is it going to be? A palatial family home, such as can be seen with converted fortifications in Alderney? Fort Richmond did provide a much-needed home relatively recently, albeit not palatial.

The Bourgaize family lived in it from 1946 to 1965. John Bourgaize was eight years old when they moved there and remembers it as the perfect place for children to grow up, running around the property in complete safety, well away from the roads and the traffic that was beginning to be a hazard even in those early days. His one brush with danger, he said, came when he was playing in an area where the Germans had been planning a building and had only got as far as fitting the steel grids for the concrete. John got his leg stuck in them for a worrying few minutes before he managed to wriggle free.The Bourgaizes had been put there because the family - 19 of them - was too big for an ordinary States house. They occupied half the fort, which contained three other flats. In addition to the freedom to play in the daytime, John enjoyed the view from his room at night: from one window he had the light from the Hanois lighthouse, while from the north-facing one he said he could see the rays from Les Casquets.

This was at a time when the shipping lanes were closer to the west coast than they are now (and consequently there were more shipwrecks on the treacherous reefs out there). ‘I used to watch the horizon for boats,’ John said. ‘The most I counted at one time was 11.’

This wasn’t luxury accommodation, though, despite the splendid location. There was no electricity, in the early years no water inside the building and no bathroom, with simple toilets across the courtyard. And the rent? As John recalls, while normal States houses were 35 shillings (£1.75) a week, the Bourgaizes paid 42 shillings.

Fiercely proud of the place at the time it provided his family with a home, he asserts that, despite reports in the Guernsey Evening Press that there were rats there, in 19 years he never saw a single one. As family members got married and the number dwindled to manageable proportions, they were relocated to a new house at Les Bas Courtils, and John and his own family are now happily ensconced in their own home in Bailiff’s Cross Road.

In the late 1960s the sport of surfing was enjoying such a boom that members of the Surf Club were looking for premises for a clubhouse. Up to that time they had been using a green wooden hut near what is now La Mare de Carteret School, but large numbers were taking up the sport, the hippie-like nature of which made it ideal for the times.

And then there were those who liked to subscribe to the image without ever getting wet: the ‘highway surfers’ with boards strapped to the roof rack of their cars and membership of the club, even if they had no inclination to actually ride a wave on anything but one of Condor’s new-fangled hydrofoils.

In 1967, the Surf Club started lobbying in earnest to take over Fort Richmond and States members generally liked the idea. Deputy Edmund Burbridge spoke of how, when the Surf Club found suitable premises, it would ‘be turning its attention to organising this new and healthy sport on a competitive basis’.

In early 1968, the surfers got their wish, with a 20-year lease at £100 a year, to be reviewed every seventh year and sharing it with the Western Venture Scouts and a group of Girl Guides.

It cost £2,000 to make the building wind and watertight and club members set about the interior work themselves. Barry Hughes, later to become well known in the TV aerials and satellite dishes business, and who still lives literally a stone’s throw from the beach at Vazon, built the fireplaces, tiled the showers and, as he puts it, ‘acted as general dogsbody’, while Colin Le Gallez and Dave Mahy were the carpenters, Tim Thompson and his father took care of the electrics and Richard Gillingham was chief plasterer. With club president Dr Frank Neubert, who surfed well into his 70s, keeping an avuncular eye on the proceedings, those assisting Mr Hughes in the dogsbody department were such characters as Keith Ogier, Brian Corbet, Steve Bisson, Ginge Perchard, Dave Julou, Mick McCormick and Tony and Don Clark, with Barry Ozard and Barry Johnson as the ‘design and organisation team’.The clubroom was opened on 12 September 1968 by the Bailiff, Sir William Arnold.

Eventually the fort had a 42ft clubroom, a TV lounge, committee room, bunkhouse, showers and utility room, with a large mural over the coffee bar painted by Tony Parkes.

There were surfing films shown, projected onto a wall, and a disco throbbed regularly, while musicians would occasionally drop in late in the evening to jam with whoever was around.

Sadly, all the hard work involved in creating the clubroom had taken its toll on the spirit of the organisation, with the grind of hard work perhaps going against the grain of a lifestyle that really required little more than some waves and a board, with music and girls as desirable extras. The loss of enthusiasm led to financial difficulties and in the early 1970s it was all over for the link between the Surf Club and the fort. There are members now who see taking on the project as a kind of loss of innocence after the simple, makeshift pleasures of the green hut. After all, would you have found the Beach Boys painting and decorating in their spare time, rather than riding a wave?

Surfing continues to thrive and many of the old guard can still be found at Vazon, but the only traces of them at the fort now are the mural and their DNA.

Fort Richmond was taken over by a Christian group for upwards of 15 years, although neither of the former leaders we spoke to could come up with dates. The National Young Life Campaign welcomed young people of all faiths to the fort and, according to lay preacher Steve Henry, would entertain as many as 120 of them on Saturday nights with youth club-type activities - table tennis, pool, darts etc. - and a more serious, thoughtful session known as the epilogue later in the evening. Concerned that it was being mistaken for Pro Life, a group that opposes abortion and premarital sex, the NYLC eventually changed its name to Young Life.

After years at Fort Richmond featuring Sunday after-church sessions, Wednesdays given over to Bible study and Thursday evenings devoted to younger people, and for a time with a coffee bar, Pilgrims, run by George ‘Donkey’s Ears Ago’ Torode, Young Life scaled down its activities there and eventually moved out.

Since then the fort has been empty. Now it awaits a completely new era.

After the primitives armed with nothing but stones and invective, the soldiers with their 19th-century firearms, the occupying forces, the surfers and the Christians, what next?