Peter Ferbrache: From one Guernsey grandfather to another

I was prompted to write this by the article written by my distant cousin on my mother’s side, namely Horace Camp, which appeared in this newspaper last month.

I am a few years older than Horace, but we are of the same vintage with similar recollections and concerns. I too am a Guernsey-born grandfather.

He is right in that the make-up of our community is now much different. It probably has changed in some ways much more in the last 40 years than it did from 40 years ago back to the time of my three times great-grandfather Daniel Ferbrache (on my father’s side). He lived from 1782-1851. I only learned a lot about him because in December 2023 Dr Rose-Marie Crossan kindly sent me some information concerning his life that she had researched in respect of a book she was writing about Charles Mollet.

My ancestor worked for Mr Mollet as a 14-year-old labourer in 1797, but he always wanted to get away to be a seaman. Mr Mollet was most tolerant because on various occasions my ancestor left Mr Mollet’s employment, only later to return. Eventually he sailed off to Virginia and later on he joined the crew of a privateer. He eventually returned to Guernsey and stayed permanently, after the boat he was on was captured by a French privateer off Cuba.

So he came back to Guernsey and, at the age of 31, married.

He was a typically industrious Guernseyman. He rented a plot, fished (in a boat he owned with two of his brothers) and laboured for Mr Mollet. His wife sold Mr Mollet fish.

Over time his industry bore fruit and he managed to buy two houses, outbuildings, a field, and dunes close to Vazon. He and his wife had a total of 11 children.

I move on to my grandfather, also called Daniel Ferbrache, who was born in 1872, who worked as a stonemason (until he was 80) and had 14 children with my French grandmother, their youngest child being my father who was born in 1928.

My father and my mother only managed to produce four children, of which I was the eldest, born in 1951.

Throughout all that time the make-up of the Guernsey population did change, but not to the degree and with the current rapidity referred to by Horace.

The first time that we sought to control in some way the occupation of property by non-locals was by way of statute in 1948 which mercifully (compared with today) ran to just a few sections.

I went off to law school, became a barrister at 21 and was never returning to Guernsey to live. The world was my ormer. Come then to the age of 28 and living in Nottingham, married with, at that time, three young children. We as a family decided in fact to return to Guernsey. At 28 I got my first passport. I needed it to go to Caen to study for the exams I was required to take to practice as a lawyer here. I had no French but, emboldened with the industry that is embodied in so many Guernsey folk, studied hard and achieved the highest grade that it was possible to obtain.

I returned to Guernsey in the summer of 1980 and qualified as a Guernsey advocate in 1981. I recently passed my 44th anniversary of my call to the Guernsey Bar.

At that time, all the law firms were Guernsey-owned and run. I joined the firm then called Ozanne, van Leuven & Perrot. When I attended our first Christmas lunch at the Imperial, the total number of people in the firm, that is clerks, secretaries and advocates, totalled 13. All were local. The senior partner was Percy Ozanne, whose father had been an Ecrivan. Percy (always ‘Mr Ozanne’ to me – he merited that respect) had been called to the Guernsey Bar in his RAF uniform in September 1945. Two of his clerks, Don Le Conte and Cec Priaulx – great gentlemen – had joined the firm in late 1945 and early 1946 respectively.

I was, when I was called, either the 20th or 21st advocate then practicing, and I was called to the Guernsey Bar on the same day as my long-standing friend and another Guernsey boy of working-class background, Steve Denziloe.

How things have changed over the last 40-plus years. Society-wise far faster than in the hundreds of years that otherwise had elapsed since my three times great-grandfather’s time.

There are many reasons for that. Probably the main factor was the growth in the finance sector. Guernsey has had riches and the stability of well-paid employment spread across our community, the like of which we had never seen before. In addition there has been the growth of technology. We can now in an instant find out what the weather is like in some way-off place we had never heard of before.

Wealth has given us the opportunity to travel. The world is a smaller place in so many ways, but also impinges upon our lives in this small community in ways we would never previously have contemplated.

We have increased the services and benefits available again in ways our ancestors could not have contemplated and that has happened so quickly.

When my father was injured in an industrial accident when I was seven or eight years of age, and had to spend months in an English hospital, my mother had the responsibility of looking after (then) three children and received from the State total benefits of 75 pence (15 shillings in old money) per week, so went out cleaning and survived with help also from two in particular of my father’s brothers. That meant on occasions my mother would have to leave me looking after my two very young sisters. Can you imagine that now? She would have had social workers to her left, right and centre but also she would be in receipt of significant benefits.

Evidence of change abounds everywhere. The field of activity I know best is the legal profession.

The larger Guernsey firms of advocates are all controlled from jurisdictions beyond our shores. They are all jurisdictionally agnostic. The Guernsey Bar has now in excess of 250 advocates. Our Bailiff (able and conscientious and totally dedicated to Guernsey) is English and the law officers are also from the mainland. The majority of our resident judges are English.

Our banks are also different in that you used to have your local manager, who had probably been at that bank for many years, and knew his/her customers well. Those managers were given much more autonomy, whereas now that has been much reduced by their controllers from afar.

I remember when I was preparing in 1995 to deliver the Raymond Falla Memorial Lecture looking back to the Occupation and forward over the next 50 years, reading something written by Jurat Stanley Jehan who was a bank manager of the old sort. He described how he would spend days seeing growers about their financial needs with their hands stained from the juice of the tomatoes and flowers. Now that industry has departed and with much, and alarming, rapidity.

When the finance co-sector was developing many of the fiduciary businesses were controlled and owned by local residents. There are still exceptions, but the general rule is that is no longer the case.

The reality is, to a large measure, our fate is outside of our control.

So grandfather of one Horace and from the same local heritage as you, and as a grandfather of seven, I say that you are correct the world has changed. Where I differ, but only to a degree, is that we, the Guernsey folk, have accepted, and indeed in some cases, welcomed these changes. We cannot turn back any clocks. We cannot alter the past. We can though fashion the future. We can, if we are positive, take steps to change things, but they will have to be radical whilst remaining the decent and civilised community we have always been. I want Horace’s grandson, and many others like him, to have the chance to come back and make his life in Guernsey if that is what he and they want. So let us get on and do something about it and not say ‘Oh it is all so difficult’.