Secret gardens of Jersey We feature Jersey gardens that are in private ownership and not always accessible by the general public. In this issue, Alasdair Crosby was shown around the garden of Seafield House, Millbrook
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t one time, the gardens of Seafield House stretched down to the sea, merging into dunes and beach. A defensive wall was built and was unearthed a few years ago - but that was not to make more difficult the incursions of the sea, just the incursions of the French. Later in the 19th Century the construction of the railway first of all cut it off from the sea; then the creation of Victoria Avenue made the sea even more remote. Nevertheless, the garden and the house it serves are still there, although invisible from Victoria Avenue and hidden away on its other side from the St Aubin’s Inner Road, where the entrance gives little clue as to what might be tucked away in between the two busy thoroughfares.
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The house, originally named Beau-mur, was built for François Giffard, a leading Jersey banker, merchant and smuggler This secret garden encompasses a double fronted fine Regency Greek revival villa, originally built in 1808. Its architect is uncertain, but it has been suggested that it was David Laing, a pupil of the great Sir John Soane, or possibly another Regency architect, Robert Lugar.
The house, originally named Beaumur, was built for François Giffard, a leading Jersey banker, merchant and smuggler. The Baron de Frénilly wrote of Giffard: ‘he brought up his children in fear of God and in horror of customs men.’ It was bought in 1821 by Michel Le Gros; his grandson, Gervase, was a leading Island figure of the time: Greffier, Vicomte and Jurat. In 1922 it was purchased by Maxwell Vandeleur Blacker-Douglass and passed down through the family until 1975 when the present owner, Richard Miles, inherited it from his grandmother, The Hon Mrs Florence Westenra. In September 1887, Seafield was let for a month to Princess Stéphanie of Austria, daughter of King Leopold of the Belgians, and wife of Archduke Rudolph von Hapsburg, the heir to Emperor Franz-Joseph of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She travelled to Jersey with a retinue of 16. Two years later she was widowed when her husband, Rudolph, committed suicide together with his mistress in an apparent suicide pact, in the notorious ‘Mayerling Incident’. In 1943 the house was requisitioned as a ’Soldatenheim’ for German soldiers.
