NO SOONER had the gavel gone down on the auction of a derelict seafront cottage near the Vale Church in June than arrangements began to auction 10 fields in the lanes of St Peter’s.
The format will be similar to Cooper Brouard’s auction of seven fields in St Saviour’s last year, held nearby at The Farmhouse Hotel.
It’s the same venue for the forthcoming auction on 26 August and the 10 fields will be divided into eight lots, ranging in size from 1.5 to 6.5 vergees. The local tradition of measuring fields in vergees and perches dates back many centuries and woe betide the estate agent who advertises Guernsey land solely in the anglicised equivalent of acres.
By way of comparison, 40 perches equal one vergee and 2.5 vergees are close enough to one English acre not to make any difference. According to the States archivist Dr Darryl Ogier, vergees and perches derive from measuring sticks or poles, much as the term ‘rods’ was used in England. There is also a smaller measurement of feet, or ‘pied’, but that is seldom used.
The French system of using hectares is uncommon in Guernsey, mainly because just one amounts to nearly 2.5 acres and few fields or smallholdings in Guernsey are large enough to quote in those terms.
At the risk of further antagonising the purists, one acre is about the size of a school football pitch or 16 tennis courts. The term is thought to originate from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘aecer’ for growing crops or meaning a fertile field, regardless of its size. The reference to acre as a measurement originated later from the amount of land tillable by one man using one ox in one day.
Guernsey fields today seem to be measured in some quarters by how many houses can be built on them. Flippancy aside, the current Island Development Plan makes great play of protecting agricultural land but the written policies contain provisos to the contrary.
Prior to 2016 its predecessor was the Rural Area Plan, which was clear as to a point of law about what fields could be used for and precise in its definition of agricultural use. Emphasis was placed on ‘protecting and enhancing the openness of the landscape’ and opportunities for development were virtually non-existent, even for horticultural or agricultural purposes.
At the beginning of 2015, while the current IDP was being drafted, Guernsey Dairy’s milk price controls ended. Three months earlier the price of a litre of milk had risen by 1p to £1.12, after which retailers and distributors were able to set their own prices. The States also introduced stricter controls on the import of milk, claiming the provisions would allow the dairy industry to ‘move forward to a sustainable future’ and allow the States to reduce the subsidy it pays to the industry.
A litre of locally sourced Guernsey milk now costs either side of £1.60, depending upon the retailer, and last week’s emergency States funding of half a million pounds, admittedly in extraneous circumstances, plus the current issues with the States dairy illustrate how those provisions have failed and the precarious situation the industry now faces.
There are currently 12 working dairy farms and fractionally more than 1,250 cows supplying approximately 7.5m. litres of milk to the dairy every year. States subsidies aside, further fragmentation of our precious and finite fields must stop in order to retain green belts of land to keep farming of all descriptions viable.
Because arable and dairy farming do not have exclusivity of our island’s fields. Guernsey’s equine fraternity is as strong as ever, numbers of Golden Guernsey goats are increasing once more and locally reared sheep and pigs, the most common domestic animals seen in Guernsey before the 1700s, are returning to the island on a commercial basis.
Beekeeping is also increasingly popular, with the Guernsey Beekeeping Association recently celebrating its 70th year. Bees can live more than 10 times longer in hives than in the wild and last year the association held an introductory course in the keeping, managing and caring for colonies of honeybees that was soon oversubscribed.
It’s no surprise then that one of the smaller fields in Cooper Brouard’s forthcoming auction is receiving a lot of interest from conservationists in general and beekeepers in particular.
Its west-facing slope and leafy boundaries provide shelter and sustenance for wildlife, with plenty more nutrition in the surrounding fields and hedgerows. Along the lower edge of the field’s shallow-valley setting is a douit of sorts and the field’s own small dry well with lined walls is useful for water storage.
The remaining seven auction lots are prime agricultural land, having been ably farmed in one family’s ownership for generations. All the fields have roadside access and are in close proximity to each other for maximum efficacy. By way of example, three adjoining fields are the other side of the same lane as four fields also adjoining each other. Lot seven forms one of those fields and not only has electricity on site but also borehole water providing 2,000 gallons per hour.
The price of good agricultural land has increased sharply in recent years, although the rental return is comparatively low, with peppercorn rents common in some instances. Responsibility for maintaining hedges and any ditches is also part of the territory for tenants, as is soil treatment. As such, good tenants are as much value to a landowner as the rent they pay.
Last Saturday the Guernsey Press reported on the number and average price of house sales during July, which is compiled by market analyst ABConveyances and separate from the States’ imminent second quarterly residential prices bulletin for 2022.
Next week I will explain how the findings corroborate my predictions made at the beginning of the year, and sadly, how my warnings about price hikes remain unheeded.
For the moment, Saturday’s report reaffirms the market’s appetite and robust nature in all property sectors, beginning understandably at grass roots level with prime agricultural land.
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