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About Guernsey
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| Guernsey, Channel Islands |
The second largest of the Channel Islands, and the most Western, Guernsey is approximately nine miles by five miles wide in a triangular shape and is 24 square miles in area.
Although still famous for its tomatoes, Guernsey cows and Guernsey jumpers, the main industry in Guernsey is now the offshore finance industry. Tourism and horticulture come next followed by light industry. Hundreds of acres of glasshouses were dedicated to tomato growing in the 1970s when 9 million trays per annum were exported. Although the smaller plum tomatoes are still grown on a small-scale, most glasshouses are now used to grow flowers, mainly carnations, freesias and roses.
By 2000, around 55 per cent of the island's wealth was generated by the finance industry. The non-clearing banks started to settle in Guernsey in the 1960s but came in force in the early 1980s. There are now over 50 banks registered in Guernsey, most of these being subsidiaries of major international or UK banks.
The geography of the island is quite varied with long sandy beaches on the west coast rising to one hundred metre high cliffs along the south coast with a lot of small coves and fishing ports. The East coast is dominated by the capital town of St Peter Port which rises from the harbour and nestles on a steep cliff like many French towns. Despite the predominance of international banks based in St Peter Port, the town has managed to retain its seventeenth-century charm and the high street still has its original cobbles. The granite built buildings now occupied by shops were originally the homes of the wealthy.
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| Cobo Bay | South Coast Cliffs |
In St Peter Port is the former home of Hugo who once described the Channel Islands as "little pieces of France fallen into the sea and scooped up by Britain ". He lived in Guernsey between 1855 and 1870. He dedicated Les Miserables and Les Travailleurs de la Mer to the island of Guernsey
Like the other Channel Islands, Guernsey is self-governing and has been a Crown dependency since 1066. Whilst the island is British, it is not part of the United Kingdom and is the only and is only is only an associate of the EC. English has only been the spoken language since the 1920s since prior to this, the local language was Guernesaise. Its use however diminished quite quickly as a result of the German occupation of 1940 to 1945 . The dialect even varied between the various parishes as there appeared to be very little mixing between folk of the parishes in centuries gone by.
There are more than fifty church congregations on the island covering all main denominations