Fascinating Fermain

It's not often that Elton John is mentioned in the same breath as ferry boats and smugglers, but they are all part of the enthralling history of Fermain MENTION Fermain today and people think of the award-winning cafe-restaurant by the beach, Le Chalet Hotel halfway up the hill and the Fermain Valley Hotel, which has brought new life further up since Healthspan bought La Favorita and the Fermain Hotel and transformed the area.

The name has also been in the local media in the past year because of the narrow lane that runs down the valley and the traffic that uses it.

Perhaps the best way of looking at Fermain is to start in the present and work back through history. So, today it's full of restaurants and hotel rooms, with the beach a bit of an afterthought for many people. But in the 1950s and 60s and even into the 70s, this was one of the island's most popular with swimmers and sunbathers (it's never been much good for games, being pebbly until low tide and then wet and uneven).

What made Fermain unique, though, was the ferry service that brought boatloads of visitors around from Town. If you fancied a little adventure on the sea with the feeling of island-hopping - even though you would be stepping back onto the same piece of land and going only about a mile as the crow flies - it made for a different day out.

The small matter of getting the passengers ashore, originally done by dinghy, was later addressed by a rolling landing stage, a wooden structure in several parts on big carriage wheels. Three of those wheels - all that remain of a contraption that was once known island-wide - now stand in the cafe grounds, novelties that most visitors would hardly notice.

The main part of the landing stage stood perhaps 8ft high, sloping down to half that, where it would be met by a low-slung, flat unit, also on wheels, which would suffice at most stages of the tide, with a simple wooden walkway taking passengers onto the beach. At exceptionally low tides, with the water shallow and the boats unable to come in too close, more of the walkways would have to be employed, sometimes propped up on stones as the landing stage staff improvised frantically to keep customers' feet out of the water as they 'walked the plank'.

It was a classic example of the kind of quaint, makeshift approach that never hurt anyone but would certainly not be allowed in these safety-conscious, insurance-ruled days. Nor, it seems, would the whoopee floats, the raft-type individual pleasure craft that amounted to two long boxes linked by planks on which to sit and propelled canoe-style by paddles.

The ferry service was run by the Ferguson family, a previous generation of which had lived in the Martello tower in the 1860s.

The Malletts had run a tea room from the magazine (ammunition store). The building that now houses the acclaimed Fermain Beach Cafe was built as a much less ambitious kiosk.

The ferry service began operating in 1928.

John Elliott, now principal of the Guernsey Sailing Trust, was involved with both the Fermain boats and the cafe in the early and mid-1970s. Starting as an engineer for the boss, Percy Ferguson, on Fermain V, an elegant, open vessel which had famously taken part in the Dunkirk evacuation during the Second World War, John went on to skipper Fermain VI for four years, before taking over the running of the catering operation.

Fermain V had previously been called Silver Queen and was built in 1926 in Southampton for use as a harbour launch. Hardly ideal for crossing the Channel, it was towed across to Dunkirk, where it was used to ferry soldiers from the beach to the destroyers and transport ships waiting offshore. Boats of its type were considered expendable after the operation and there was a report that it had sunk but been refloated before being brought to Guernsey and a new career making the short trip from St Peter Port Harbour past Castle Cornet and Soldiers' Bay to deliver and collect passengers, its minimal (2ft) draught enabling it to be brought relatively close to the shore at low water to meet the landing stage, even on those problematic spring tides.

It could certainly get in closer than Fermain VI, the propeller of which would create craters in the sand as it reversed to avoid running aground as the tide retreated still further.

When the ferry service ceased in 1996, Fermain V was laid up ashore for three years and had begun to deteriorate when the Dunkirk Little Ships Restoration Trust came calling. Suitably repaired, the boat was based at Tilbury, in London's docklands area, for two years and used by sea cadets for boat-handling training.

Then, after taking part in the 2000 Commemorative Return to Dunkirk, it was rehomed on the Thames at Shepperton. It still takes part in Dunkirk-related events.

The high wall that separates the land from the beach in front of the cafe at Fermain used to be matched by another on the southern side of the slipway, but this has now been lowered to a less vertigo-inducing level.

The change came about because of landslips during the mid-1990s, when a Board of Administration spokesman said: 'The whole south side of Fermain is moving.'

It moved so much that the wall collapsed, but then came the assertion that the 150-year-old structure hadn't been a sea wall at all, but 'a masonry skin over a rubble and earth cliff face'.

Reducing the height was the answer and in 1995-6 the States spent £240,000 rebuilding it, only for the granite facing that masked the concrete armour to be ripped off by the power of the sea. A section of the cliff path was dangerous, too, and Mr Ferguson donated some land further up on which to build a replacement.

That is just part of a long list of changes that have taken place there over the centuries. Old postcards from the collection of Village de Putron resident Anne Woodington show the valley largely without trees, with a building some way up on the right as you look upwards, the remains of which can still be found among the trees and undergrowth. Some also show what was apparently a small hotel near the top of the slipway, past the tower.

A feature of the valley is the presence of what is generally referred to as 'giant rhubarb' but is actually gunnera, a South American native that was probably introduced during Victorian times, when the plant was very popular.

The origins of the name, 'Fermain', are as obscure as many local place names, but Marie de Garis' book on the subject suggests 'stony, iron-strong, probably a fortified strongpoint'.

Another school of thought is that it could be taken as what many would consider a clumsy and too obvious translation of fer (iron) and main (hand). One who doesn't object too much to this interpretation is Jenny Seth-Smith, who runs the officially approved guided walk in the area and calls it Tales of Smuggling and the Steel Hand.

While the valley has a damp, jungle feel today - the stream that runs down it marks the boundary between St Peter Port and St Martin's - the north side was at one time planted with barley (the lane being called La Ruette des Orgeries meaning lane of the barley fields) to supply the brewery at South Esplanade.

Jenny's walk goes from Sausmarez Manor through Le Varclin, where she talks at length about the properties in the area, including distinguished old farmhouses and the more recent (19th-century) but distinctly grand Bon Air.

It goes down Calais Road, named after the de Calais family, and left into a tiny lane that gives way to a footpath. At the top of the path there is evidence of quarrying, with a rather crumbly kind of red granite.

Halfway down is a small clearing with a seat, providing a clear view of the bay. This appears to be the vantage point for the vast majority of Anne's postcards.

The path, the lower part of which has been altered in recent years, comes out further above the slipway than it used to.

Because it offers good shelter and is close to Town, Fermain has, over the centuries, been considered as a possible harbour, although by today's standards it would clearly be too small.

According to some sources, under the sand there is evidence of an ancient wooden harbour. More recently, Fermain was used by smugglers, for whom the proximity to St Peter Port might not have been such a boon. Their presence may, though, have been partly responsible for the abundance of spooky tales concerning the lanes above - a headless man carrying a coffin and so on - because spreading such tales was one way in which shady characters up to no good could persuade people to keep well away from the area.

Even before the smugglers, a hazard of living in Guernsey was the island's vulnerability to pirates and one who is reputed to have sailed into Fermain under the Jolly Roger in 1337 is Madoc of Wales. With or without eye patches or parrots on their shoulders, Madoc and his crew attracted so much attention that 87 men are said to have tried - unsuccessfully - to repel them.

A house a few hundred yards away in Les Hubits is called Mare Mado, which may indicate that this band of cut-throats went for a walk and made an impression on the residents there.

The bay was the scene of a famous episode during the English Civil War, when Guernsey was for the Parliamentarians and only the Governor, Sir Peter Osborne, supported the Crown. As the governor's residence at the time was in Castle Cornet, that was where Osborne stayed, besieged, for eight long years, supported by troops brought in from England by sea.

During this time, cannonfire echoed across the water in largely harmless exchanges. This was before the building of the castle breakwater and it was possible to get to and from the rock only at low tide.

One day, three jurats - referred to as parliamentary commissioners - were tricked into meeting a Captain Bowden, whom they knew as a Parliamentarian, on his ship, Bramble, at Fermain. Once he had them on board, Bowden revealed that he had changed his allegiance and took them to the castle, where they were imprisoned. The resourceful trio managed to make ropes from flax they found in the room below the one in which they were held,

digging through the floor to reach it, and escaped down the outside walls. The tide was out and they made it to dry land.

Fermain has several interesting features. Just below the cliff path as you go towards St Peter Port can be found the Ozanne Steps, now apparently in the middle of nowhere but built for the convenience of a family living in a property above. At the top are the remains of what is thought to have been a tiny chapel in which fishermen and their families could pray or give thanks for a safe return from the sea.

The roof and two walls have gone, but indentations are still clearly visible where it would seem that ormer shells had been used for decoration.

The steps may originally have been called the de Putron steps after the family that owned a huge estate in the area, including what was to become the Village de Putron.

In the 1930s, this was bought by the States with the intention of building a mental hospital there, before the Le Vauquiedor site was acquired - although that became the Princess Elizabeth Hospital, while the mental health unit was based at the former Country Hospital, now the Castel Hospital.

The States sold the land to a developer.

Meanwhile, back up the main Fermain hill, we return to the hotels. Built early in the 20th century as a private house, Le Chalet has one of the most fabulous locations in the island, perched on the hillside overlooking the bay and with the alpine aura for which whoever chose the name must have hoped.

The house was owned by an innovative man with a practical bent, who installed a dynamo in a summer house down the hill and used the power of the stream to generate electricity. It is thought that the house was the first in the island to use electricity for lighting.

Just up the hill, the Fermain Valley Hotel is a combination of La Favorita and the Fermain Hotel, the latter, at the top of the hill, having been demolished and now serving as a car park.

La Favorita was once a 'gentlemen's club'. It served as accommodation for officers during the German Occupation and became a hotel after the Second World War. Run for many years by Simon Wood, it was recently bought by Healthspan and transformed into a thoroughly up-to-date establishment that, happily, retains much of the exterior character of the original.

The area has an interesting architectural theme, with private houses and the nearby nursing home, Chateau du Village, being built in a Gothic style.

While that does not apply across the road at the Fermain Tavern, that is a pub that has played a considerable part in the social life of the generation that was out 'socialising' in the late 1960s and '70s and into the '80s. With its unusual configuration of a dance floor and stage that is lower than the main bar area, the Tavern has throbbed as a disco and reverberated with live music. Today it has a devoted crowd of regulars in the public bar and concentrates on serving food.

Undoubtedly the most famous face to peer up at the beer-swilling crowd was that of Elton John, who appeared there in the late 1980s as a favour to Beechy Colclough, the Irishman who had been one of the most charismatic singers to perform in Guernsey 10 years earlier, before confronting his own addiction problems and using the experience to set up a clinic in London, where Captain Fantastic sought help.

The Elton gig was part of a series of Saturday afternoon shows in which names well known in rock circles made the trip to Guernsey more for the social side than as a money-making exercise. This was a time when British soul singer Paul Young (Wherever I Lay My Hat, Every Time You Go Away, etc) was a frequent visitor to the island and his musical director, Ian Kewley, had a farmhouse in a lane near the Longfrie, complete with recording studio.

The driving force behind the Fermain Tavern gigs was sound engineer Alfie Barton, a friend of Young and Kewley, and with an address book that could bring seasoned performers to the island to play in a pub: the figures surely didn't stack up at all.

Former Rolling Stone and John Mayall guitarist Mick Taylor played there, ignoring a mouth abscess that eventually made a hole in his cheek, while blues veterans Chicken Shack came over, as did former Small Faces and Humble Pie frontman Steve Marriott and Snowy White, an itinerant guitarist and one-hit-wonder solo artist (Bird of Paradise) who spent some time with Thin Lizzy.