From peaceful bed chamber to the very shambles of death

It was late September 1927. Aristide and his wife ate their supper, left the dishes and their copy of the Guernsey Evening Press open on the kitchen table and retired early to bed. They never woke up as just before midnight a portion of The Strand cliff face came tumbling down on their old rented cottage behind Castle View, South Esplanade.

Above their bed, held to a wall by a tin-tack, was a tiny crucifix.

Over to the Press to describe the tragedy, with some remarkable journalistic licence and even a touch of imagination.

‘At 11.30 last night, Mrs and Mrs Aristide Hurel were sleeping in their bedroom on the ground floor of the cottage behind Castle View.

‘At 11.40 that peaceful bed chamber was the very shambles of death. Over 15 tons of huge stones had broken through the solid wall between them and the Strand above, the whole galvanised roof above them was smashed in, and below, on their twisted iron bed their bodies, horribly mangled, with a huge heap of stones piled up high above them, were silent in death.

‘It was a swift and merciful, if terrible death that had been meted out of them by inscrutable Providence.

‘And above it all, unmoved and mystically intact, still held by the little tin-tack was the Crucifix – silent and as if compassionately gazing at the inferno of pain, suffering and death.’

There we have it. The unnamed writer had certainly laid it on with a fashion of descriptive writing which was common place in an era when people were less sensitive to injury and death. Indeed, the old farmer and his wife – who is never identified by a first name – were mightily unlucky.

Yet, incredibly and so luckily, a young girl, Ada Smith, visiting from Winchester, was sleeping at the other end of the bedroom and escaped unhurt.

The Hurels’ sons, sleeping elsewhere in the house, also survived.

One had returned from the pictures and had just gone to bed when he heard a ‘stupendous crash’.

His brother was slightly injured, while a resident Frenchman had his nose grazed by a passing piece of granite.

Next door at Castle View, the Harlands were listening to the Savoy Orchestra on the wireless when, all of a sudden, ‘above the music came an ominous rumble’.

The screams of young Ada ‘from the room of death’ attracted the attention of Mr Harland.

He got through to it by another door before discovering ‘a pathetic sight’.

‘Her head wedged between beams and her legs protruding from the debris, was little Ada. Mr Harland raised beams to free her and she was able to escape with barely a scratch,’ described the Press.

A century on, the emergency services would have been on site within minutes and the entire front closed off.

In 1927, Mrs Harland was on ‘an errand of succour and mercy’.

The police were informed by phone and she set out and got a number of police as a rescue force. A car was procured and the police set about the rescue work with the Fire Brigade.

‘And at about 4 o’clock in the morning, all the huge stones and rubble had been removed, the rescuers came upon the mangled bodies of Mr and Mrs Hurel, lying on their twisted bed.’

The Press again...

‘It was a pathetic moment and the one bright ray in that early morning dismal scene was the assurance that they had fallen on sleep for ever, unaware of the tragedy which submerged them.’

The coroner ruled death by accident and there was no evidence to show the cause of the fall, although it should be noted that more than 80 years later developers of the old Guernsey Brewery site next door took no chances with the old cliff face beneath the Strand, shoring it up before construction work went ahead.