History
The castle was built around 1330 on the orders of Sir John des Roches. The walls were built from the local granite and are thickest on the landward side. Its position on a clifftop 200 ft (~ 60 m) above the sea means that on three sides it is protected by the natural features of the site. A ditch dug into the rock provides protection on the fourth side.
The gatehouse, which is the only substantial remnant today, was protected by a drawbridge and portcullis and would have been very difficult to capture. The castle, though, had a number of weaknesses. There were no sally ports for counter-attacks; there were only two simple buildings providing accommodation; most importantly, there was no water well inside the walls.
The remains of ruined walls, mostly footings, are still present.
The castle was twice captured by the French, in 1373 and 1381 and was probably demolished around the time of the French occupation of Jersey (1461–1468). Certainly, in 1483 the Seigneur of St Ouen was allowed to fortify his manor house and it is unlikely he would have been given permission if Grosnez was still in use.
In 1806, a naval signal station was established at Grosnez to send messages to Guernsey.
Read more about this topic: Grosnez Castle
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“The history of literature—take the net result of Tiraboshi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of a very few ideas, and of very few original tales,—all the rest being variation of these.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)