This is a liminal place – a place in between – in more ways than one. Floating between Britain and France, the Minquiers have long been subject to not just the whims of the tides, but the squabbles of dukedoms and governments, torn between Normans, Britons and French for more than 1,000 years. Today, they are under the jurisdiction of Jersey, counting as a self-governing part of the British Isles but not part of the United Kingdom.
“It’s been fought over since 955 CE,” said Josh Dearing, skipper of the Jersey Seafaris boat that had just ferried me to Maîtresse over a pancake-flat English Channel, “but the buildings have been here since the 1800s.”
Dearing – who doubles as a tour guide – led me through Maîtresse’s ghostly village, its stone buildings in varying states of disrepair and decay. “They were built by fishermen from the harbour of La Rocque [in southern Jersey]and also miners and quarrymen [who were] after the island’s granite,” said Dearing. Foragers for vraic – seaweed used as fertiliser – would also make landing here. On the island’s northern shore are the ruins of a former hospital, used to treat miners’ injuries during the quarrying period in the 19thCentury. The buildings sit on the only part of the island that doesn’t vanish with the tides. For the same reason, this is the only scrap of land on the Minquiers that supports greenery, in the form of scented pelargoniums – planted by fishermen who used their soft leaves as toilet paper.
Dearing pointed out a neatly carved graffito on the hospital’s outside wall, displaying the initials “C BS” above a date: 1865. Most of the buildings date from this time. Nowadays a few of the cottages are still used by fishermen, but most are privately owned by a handful of Jersey families, who will spend a night or two on Maîtresse when the weather is fine. There are no permanent residents, and no hotels – or anywhere else – for tourists to stay. Sales of the cottages are rare, and the owners are protective of their property.
