This Is Guernsey

The hotel was redeveloped by Lord de Saumarez early in the 19th century within a 4.5 acre site, surrounded by a granite wall. In this 1937 shot, people can be seen on the putting green on the front lawn. The upturned boat wreck used as a fisherman’s store is in the bottom left of the picture, close to the people strolling among the dunes. (0602922)

THE Germans all but wrecked it, that great sea lord de Saumarez transformed it into a school for his ailing son and plans for the 1951 Festival of Britain were drawn up there.

The former Grandes Rocques Hotel has certainly seen some sights.

On its pink granite perch, the building has lorded it over the area dividing La Saline and Port Soif for more than 200 years.

For 50 of those years it was run by the Way family and for decades there was hardly a more popular ‘mein host’ than the man never seen in public without his bow tie, Claude Way.

It is 20 years since he shut the door on one of 20th century Guernsey’s finest hotels – the Grandes Rocques – but get him on the subject and he will happily take you back to golden years for an area which you can’t help thinking has left behind its great fun and charm.

While a stone’s throw away islanders in their hundreds would pile into the Wayside Cheer for cabaret shows in the summer or great-value mass dinners in the winter, Claude Way established a hotel business of the highest reputation working alongside his wife, May.

The Foil and Pistol Bar, Grandes Rocques. (0602925)

Within its noted ballroom, badly damaged by a severe storm in late 1987, the Ways staged functions for just about everything worth celebrating and they mostly kept coming back, year in, year out.

It was Christmas 1937 when Alan Way and his family of five moved in.

Claude still recalls as a boy being sent to raise the red flag on the coquelin on top of Grandes Rocques Battery by way of warning that the Militia were to start their shooting practice.

Apart from five years in the Occupation, Claude remained there until 1988.

His father, a former steward at the Royal Guernsey, ran the hotel with his French-born wife Marie-Louise, either side of a period when he was forced out by the Germans, who had not taken it well when early in the Occupation one of their officers was struck by Claude’s father.

‘My father wouldn’t let a German go upstairs with a woman. “I’m not a brothel keeper,” he said.’

Alan Way’s punishment was six days in prison.

But with the Germans fancying the hotel for themselves, the Ways were forced out until after the war.

Firstly, Mr Way was given a temporary public house licence for Rockpond, a detached house halfway between Grandes Rocques and Cobo.

And when that ran its course he was given another temporary licence for a bar at the Mare de Carteret house, the big pink-granite property which overlooks La Mare de Carteret playing fields.

The evacuated Claude recalled the hotel as a mess when he returned after the war.

‘When we came back it was indescribable. The place was wrecked by the Germans [around 30 were housed there] who had ripped up skirting boards for firewood.’

But when Home Secretary Herbert Morrison decided to holiday here in 1947, it was at the Grandes Rocques he stayed.

Indeed, Claude’s father recalled Morrison’s basic drawings of the planned festival of Britain, etched in ballpoint pen on the back of a discarded cigarette packet at the hotel.

Claude Way established a hotel business of the highest reputation. (0602993)

Either side of the war the hotel ran a popular public bar – the Foil and Pistol.

With a no-women rule, the bar was a haven for the local fishermen and growers, as well as other west-coasters.

Claude chuckles as he recalls the old characters – men such as ‘Fif’ Mahy.

‘I’ve got a great respect for them. They were all hard-working, nice people and we never had any trouble in the bar.’

As Guernsey life changed, the Foil and Pistol trade gradually declined and, in 1980, the pub was shut.

On 17 March 1988, the Ways locked up and moved out, leaving a grand old building that in the intervening years seems to have lost its once proud place in the community.