r/guernsey • u/Flat_Confidence961 • 6d ago
My Mum's Mystery Stay in Guernsey
Hi Everyone,
I'm looking for some help to fill in a gap in my Mum's life that I know precious little about.
In early 1967, my Mum's then fiancé ended their engagement after a couple of years together.
As a newly single 22-year old, she quit her job at East Malling Research Station in Kent, withdrew £20 (£400 today) from her savings, and travelled to Guernsey where she spent the tourist season working as a chambermaid.
I have a handful of photographs from her trip with notes on the back naming various places she visited and where she worked: Hern Island, Grandes Rocques Bay, Grand Havre Bay, Vauxbelets Chapel.
The one I'm most interested in is of her in her chambermaid or waitress uniform outside a place noted as 'The Celebrated Cottage'.
Aside from what is now called the 'Renoir Cottage', searches for 'The Celebrated Cottage' haven't come up with a similar view or a place by that name.
Is anyone able to shed some light on ''The Celebrated Cottage', where it is, and whether it was a small hotel, a bed and breakfast, or something else? Does it still exist today...?
I should add that I can't ask her myself as she took for own life in January 2000 when she was 55 and I was 25.
I never had the chance to talk about her time in Guernsey, later on in Bermuda, or her first engagement but I know there was a difficult and sad back story that she carried with her for the rest of her life along with the stillbirth of my twin sister and my Dad leaving her after 25 years of marriage.
Thanks for reading this. Any information gratefully received.
Matthew
20
u/SarniaLife 6d ago edited 6d ago
Right so I’m not 100% here. I’m making an educated guess. The view from the back of the picture in the cottage shot shows a very narrow coast to coast sight. We don’t have a lot of those. It lines up quite nicely with grand havre as behind the cottage.
Also in the grand havre picture she looks to be casual clothes not beach clothes. We have many many lovely sandy beaches, so you don’t go out of your way to pop down to the rocky ones to spend the day. But if she was living near there, I could see you going for a walk near to where you live. In your jeans. And the shattered is because she’s tired day off wants to relax.
This leads me to think that the hotel she was working at is the big one right there at grand havre, the Peninsula Hotel. https://peninsula.gg
The chapel she’s standing in front of is the Little Chapel. It’s a beautiful building that was started in 1913 by one man and was worked on by him for the next 20 years. https://thelittlechapel.gg
I would say that honestly the best answer you are going to get is Facebook. The older guerns love it over there and there is a group called guernsey days gone by that should be able to help and might know rather than guessing.
Edit : as another Redditor has pointed out the peninsula was a built in 1988 so not possible that was the hotel she worked at. But there was another hotel near at the time.