CASTLES AND CONCRETE

 CASTLE AND COUNTER CASTLE

Cornet Castle watches over St Peter Port and has done for about 800 years.

The Normans first fortified this rocky outpost. Across the Middle Ages it was back and forth between French and English ownership. (Think Channel Crossers 2021) One French invasion was led a Welshman, Owain Lawgoch. 

St Peter Port 

The big guns of Cornet - seenin' off them Frenchies

 

Charles (I) sold bits off to the local council in return for running the place, feeding the garrison and such. A nine year siege during the civil war saw Parliamentarian John Lambert holed up in Cornet. Lambert took up gardening. His garden which has been re-created, nice sage bushes, I helped me self to a few leaves for supper.

One gardener enjoying the work of another 

 

Like most of Guernsey Castle Cornet  enjoyed lots of upgrades during the Napoleonic Wars. And in WW2 the Germans moved in with their modifications. Concrete of course.

 

GRANITE SEA CONCRETE 

‘Granite sea concrete’ must be rather like a game of ‘Rock, paper, scissors’.  

 

This island was strewn with Martello towers, impressive granite structures. Aiming to see of any French sea invasions during the Napoleonic wars (1803 – 13). Fort Hommet on the West coast was one example.

Along the road to Hommet 

 

Then ‘ello’, thought the just arrived German army engineers in 1940 ‘this (‘zis) will make a good gun battery’.

 

Pimp my Fort was the program of importing much slave labour onto the island as part of a vast customisation of these forts with exciting modernist concrete extensions. The Germans transported over 16,000 slave workers to the Channel Islands to build fortifications.

The visitors' book 

Add a search light or two, observation post or two and guns facing out to sea – K331s and anti-tank PAK 36 gun (made by Skoda). And then a M19 automatic mortar, 120 rounds a minute, 750 metre range. By the time this extraordinary work was completed Guernsey had more guns emplacements than the entire Normandy coast.

Crumbling into the sea