This Is Guernsey

By Chris Morvan

Eileen and her parents, Elsie and Osmond Le Page, pictured in 1942 in the garden of the farm. (0567708)

ON A sunny Saturday afternoon, albeit one subject to short, sharp showers, White Gable at Les Prevosts has many qualities that suggest the word, ‘idyllic’.

It is a slightly higgledy-piggledy property, with the main house gable-on to the road and various smaller buildings – including the dower house – gathered around it.

The fields at the back are dotted with yellow wild flowers, the pink blooms of a camellia are holding their own in the face of the sudden soakings and a tall holly tree stands defiant.

The property’s age is suggested by crumbling stone wheels lying around the yard, along with a collection of more recent marine propellers. There is a wooden wheelbarrow, a broom plant sheltering by a wall and, as further evidence that this is Guernsey, a cabbage palm.

To confirm the general location, as cars start to arrive, the faces that emerge from them include HM Greffier Ken Tough and Occupation Museum proprietor Richard Heaume. This is a visit by the Channel Islands Occupation Society to the farm owned by Eileen Keen, who died in October, and the visit has been arranged by her son, Richard Keen, the well-known diver, who is welcoming the visitors, dressed in his trademark Guernsey and red woollen hat.

As we crowd into a stable, Mr Keen gives a short talk to introduce the informal exhibition he and his family have set up, with old photographs and sheets of A4 printed paper fixed to the walls.

Jack Keen in his naval uniform. (0567714)

Here in the stable, the theme is the Occupation. Next door, in a house where the kitchen contains a full-size, plumbed-in bath, it is farming and the general history of the property and the area.

Eileen Le Page was born in 1920 and her family moved to the farm when she was two.

Jack Keen was a Yorkshireman, one of 14 children, who had run away from home as a teenager and made his way to Guernsey. He met his future wife at the beginning of the Second World War, just before he was to join the armed forces, when she knocked on his door while collecting money for the Christian charity, Missions to Seamen. Such an impression did Eileen make that, even though he hardly knew her apart from seeing her in local shops, when he was about to leave the island, Jack asked her father if he could write to her while he was away.

It took Eileen two months to decide to enter into the arrangement, but eventually the correspondence began, even when Red Cross letters were the only option and they limited the writer to 25 words.

When the war was over, the couple got married, moved to Winchester for six months and then returned to White Gable, where Eileen’s parents had moved into the dower house so that she and Jack could use the main building.

Jack took over the running of the farm and expanded the horticultural side from one greenhouse to seven, being one of the first to move from fruit to the relatively profitable roses.

Eileen and Jack pictured in 1945, having just got engaged. (0567710)

The German occupying forces had to have somewhere to store ammunition and chose the Les Prevosts area to do that, digging out pits beneath the elm trees that hung over the hedges at that time.

Walking around the fields today, one would never know, even when Mr Keen points out the locations. The only visible feature that seems out of place – and even then, we would never have realised if he hadn’t told us – is the presence of granite chippings in the soil, which mark the path of a railway that was laid across the land. Tractors and rototillers churn up this noisy evidence from time to time.

Diary Extracts

When Richard Keen was putting his late mother’s effects in order, he came across much of the material that formed the exhibition, including diaries. The following are extracts from the one kept from 1941 to 1944 by his grandmother, Elsie Le Page;