Articles

The Library's unique collections are a treasure chest of unusual, interesting and sometimes surprising material just waiting to be found. This anthology, written by the Editor, is based on an eclectic selection of our archive. The author asserts her copyright on all material on the Priaulx Library website except where copyright of other authors is expressly notified. Permission to reproduce material from this website and full attribution to the author is required in all cases.

19th century

The Small Pox, 1895

8th May 2015

Rosemary Lane, photograph by Edith Carey, 1929, Priaulx Library Collection

Two letters from the Star, January 3 1895. The picture is a detail from a photograph by Edith Carey, in the Library Collection. Part of the area of Guernsey's 'seething mass of corruption,' it shows Rosemary Lane and the top of Cornet Street steps in 1929.

St Peter Port, 1831

27th April 2015

From Samuel Lewis' Topographical Dictionary of England &c, 1831.

Osmond de Beauvoir Priaulx's original bequest

10th April 2015

Osmond de Beauvoir Priaulx's personal bookplate

I want nothing called after my name, and I will give nothing to those who already have much. .... If the money be not properly administered, better it had been thrown in the sea.

A run to the Channel Islands

20th March 2015

Extracts from an article in the United Service Magazine, Vol. 26, 1838. The author seems very much to prefer Guernsey to Jersey!

Turner's Guernsey Sketchbook

12th March 2015

In 1931 Spencer Carey Curtis, acting on a tip-off from a Jersey antiquarian, Major N V L Rybot, visited the British Museum to hunt out one of Joseph Mallord William Turner's sketchbooks, labelled 'Guernsey:'

Prince Edward Island: the Brehauts and Joseph Avard

12th March 2015

Prince Edward Island off the Canadian coast of Newfoundland has strong links to Guernsey that are very much alive today. A question was put by a visitor to the staff in the Library, enquiring as to the reason for an emigration to the island that took place in 1806.

1834: Flowers and fruit

Collected from local newspaper reports by the Gardener's Magazine, X (1834).

The King versus Gavet and Lenfestey

'His case is but one out of many that might be adduced, to prove the wisdom of intrusting the punishment of offences, in a small community like ours, to the discretion of the judges rather than to the precise letter of an unyielding statute law.' From The Star, February 3rd 1834.

Famous coin comes home, February 1951

'Described as of the highest rarity.' The Guernsey Press, 20th February 1951. Photographs from Carey Curtis Scrapbook p. 81, Staff, in the Library.

October 1812

From local newspapers in our collection.

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