Recalling our history in granite
BEFORE financial services, before tourism, and before horticulture, Guernsey had the quarrying of granite. Quarrying was the major industry in Guernsey in the 19th century and at its height, more than 250 quarries were being worked, most of them in the northern parishes.
Famously, it is local granite making the island’s coastal defences and harbours, and the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral, Blackfriars Bridge, London Bridge, the Strand and the Thames Embankment.
But the island’s granite often had more humble uses, crushed locally by hand before being used for roadmaking in Britain.
Stone production peaked in the years before World War I, but by 1967, with more than 4m. tons of granite having been exported to the UK over the years, granite exports came to an end.
The last vestiges of Guernsey’s quarrying industry remain at Les Vardes, with a couple of decades of production at Chouet now secured.
So it is timely and welcome to see the National Trust’s commitment to developing a museum to remember the island’s quarrying history, which could open in September on the site of the former Mowlem’s Yard in Church Road, St Sampson’s – the heart of quarrying country.
Its appeal for historical artefacts from the industry has gone well so far, with more expected to come through. And it is a positive that the Trust reports no shortage of enthusiasm for the museum.
It is right that we should do all we can to remember and celebrate the island’s social history, the trades and the people who helped to make Guernsey what it is today.
One day could we see a museum to remember the development of the island’s financial services industry? Perhaps not one you’d want to pay to go to see, but it’s an interesting story of progress by a mixture of the actions of others and our own ability to spot an opportunity and develop the skill to exploit it.
Guernsey has long lost its tomato museum as a tourist attraction, but it would be welcome to remember those decades of success in a historical context, as it will be with quarrying. And an organisation such as the National Trust is ideally placed to organise and stage such a project.