Occupation Archive
18th May 2015
The Library's archive of photographs from the German Occupation of the Guernsey 1940-45 is now available online.
A Priaulx Library first?
Christmas 2008 saw us feature a selection of letters and excerpts of seasonal interest from our collection. This electic mix included a couple of letters dated 1799 from the teenaged William Pierre Le Cocq, spending a miserable Christmas away from his Guernsey home at boarding school in Chesham Bois in Buckinghamshire. In the first letter to his parents, he makes the following observation: I must…
BBC's Who Do You Think You Are? - Monty Don
The Library is sometimes called on to help out with popular television programmes with a Guernsey connection.
Imperial War Museum Paintings
The Imperial War Museum have some interesting watercolours and photographs available online . These complement the Priaulx Library's own extensive collection of photographs and ephemera from the period of the Occupation and Liberation of Guernsey 1940-1945.
Index to the Sark registers
The church registers of Sark are notoriously chaotic and can be hard work for researchers, so we were delighted and very grateful to receive an index to them, long lacking, compiled by Alfred Ewen and A. R. de Carteret, and donated by the Société Sercquaise. The Index was originally presented to the Société Sercquaise by Mrs Allan R. de Carteret in memory of her husband. The index is bound…
Family surname files - new families added
Please note that we cannot send the contents of these files to enquirers. The files are, however, available to consult in person at the Priaulx Library.
Hirzel Carey De Lisle, 1836-1911
This booklet, which has been very kindly donated to us by the author, Philip Walters, relates the history of the first vicar of Galleywood, the Reverend Hirzel Carey De Lisle. The author is a Londoner. He was able to indulge his love of history when in 1998 he and his wife moved from the busy metropolis to the village of Galleywood, south of Chelmsford, just at the time the Galleywood Historical…
Lovell family papers
The Library recently received a superb donation of family and business papers, photographs and newspapers from the Lovell family of Guernsey, a fine addition to our steadily accumulating collection of old Guernsey family business documentation. This extremely varied material, featuring early and occupation newspapers, commemorative programmes, magazines and ephemera as well as some fascinating…
Stuck in the Siberia of France: Charles De Havilland
These letters form the basis of two very interesting articles by André Métayer of the Société Philatélique de Rennes. Charles (1786-1844), Captain in the 20th Regiment of Foot, was captured by the French at Capri in late 1808, and was unfortunate not to be ransomed or swapped. He remained in that miserable limbo, 'the Siberia of France,' as he called it, that was the lot of an officer POW;…
Rainbow in the Library: a home for 'Guernsey's Own' window
The Priaulx Library's St Aubyn room, where we keep our art, social and ancient history and Guernsey French collections, has always been a sunny and peaceful place to settle down to reading or research. It is even more lovely now, however, as it is flooded with colour from a beautiful stained glass window that has been transferred here from its original home at Kinloss Barracks in Scotland. The window was commissioned in 1984 to commemorate the founding of 'Guernsey's Own' 201 Squadron RAF in 1914.