St Helier
St Helier is the capital of Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands in the English Channel. It is the most populous of the twelve parishes of Jersey, with a population of 35,822, over one-third of the island's total population. The town of St Helier is the largest settlement and only town of Jersey. The town consists of the built-up areas of St Helier, including First Tower, and parts of the parishes of St Saviour and St Clement, with further suburbs in surrounding parishes.
The greater part of the parish of St Helier is rural. It covers a surface area of, being 9% of the total land area of the island.
The town sits by the coast in the southeastern corner of the parish. Within it lies the main commercial district and the principal harbour of the island. As the capital, it also hosts the island's government, parliament and courts. Evidence of settlement exists as far back as the 13th century, and the growth of the town since has been described as "spasmodic", its expansion reflecting the waves of migration to the island.
The parish arms are two crossed gold axes on a blue background, the blue symbolising the sea, and the axes symbolising the martyrdom of Helier at the hands of Saxon pirates in 555 AD.
History
Saint
St Helier is named after Helier, a 6th-century ascetic hermit from Belgium. The traditional date of his martyrdom is AD 555. His feast day, marked by an annual municipal and ecumenical pilgrimage to the Hermitage, is on 16 July.The medieval hagiographies of Helier, the patron saint martyred in Jersey and after whom the parish and town are named, suggest a picture of a small fishing village on the dunes between the marshy land behind and the high-water mark.
An Abbey of Saint Helier was founded in 1155 on L'Islet, a tidal island adjacent to the Hermitage. Closed at the Reformation, the site of the abbey was fortified to create the castle that replaced Mont Orgueil as the island's major fortress. The new Elizabeth Castle was named after the Queen by the Governor of Jersey 1600–1603, Sir Walter Raleigh.
Early St Helier
The land now known as the town of St Helier was once not much more than a low-lying basin consisting of marshy lands and sand dunes, surrounded by low hills on other sides. There is very little evidence of prehistorical settlement in the St Helier basin; the archaeological site in the parish is an Iron Age dolmen, which used to sit atop Mont de la Ville, but which was moved to the house of a former Governor in Henley-on-Thames in the 1780s. It is thought that the site of St Helier was settled at the time of the Roman control of Gaul.By 540 AD, the monk Helerius had settled on the islet in the bay of St Aubin, now part of the parish and the modern-day site of Elizabeth Castle. From this hermitage, the monk converted the island's population to Christianity, but he was killed in 555 AD by seagoing raiders, attempting to defend the island. Therefore, his hermitage took on great spiritual significance. This establishment of Christianity as the principal religion of the islanders brought with it new governmental structures by the end of the 10th century, including the parochial system. It is believed the boundaries of the parish have not much changed since that time.
The first evidence for the existence of a settlement in St Helier is in the Assize Roll of 1229. However, the parish church, the Town Church, is known to contain features that date to at least the 11th century. Although it is now some considerable distance from the sea, at the time of its original construction it was on the edge of the dunes at the closest practical point to St Helier's Hermitage. Before land reclamation and port construction started, boats could be tied up to the churchyard wall on the seaward side.
It is believed the first residences in St Helier were along modern-day Hill Street, opposite the church. These would have been simple fishermen's huts, probably constructed from local granite with roofs of thatch. There is some archaeological evidence of 12th-century habitation around Old Street, outside the medieval town area. Another site of settlement was around the Town Mills at the base of Mont Nerou. Despite not having access to the site, the location of the Abbey and the Town Church led to the village developing into the main town for the insular community. Regular markets were held in the town from at least the 15th century and the Royal Court is recorded to have sat in St Helier from ancient times. The town gained formal recognition by the Privy Council by the mid-16th century.
The street layout of the medieval town is difficult to determine, as there are no detailed street maps. A 1563 map shows a group of buildings huddled behind the town church, with an axis - likely either King Street or the Royal Square - through the centre. It is believed that the Royal Square, which was initially the town's market square, became entirely encircled with buildings by 1550. At this time, the line of King Street and Queen Street were established, extending from Charing Cross and Snow Hill.
St Helier's growth has been marked by waves aligning with waves of migration to the island. The earliest such period of growth for the town seems to be between the Reformation and the Civil War as many French Protestants sought refuge in Jersey, Jersey being a Francophone Protestant state, especially following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The first expansion of the old town was to the west. Jurat Helier Hue's lands to the north of Charing Cross were sold and developed as Hue Street and Dumaresq Street. John Seale bought lands near Charing Cross and developed Seale Street. The Vingtaine de la Ville officials confirmed their ownership of Mont de la Ville, so developed a new road La Rue des Trois Pigeons to the south of the Royal Court.
By the start of the 17th century, the town consisted of the modern Royal Square, Hill Street, Regent Road, Church Street, King Street, Queen Street and little else. The eastern gateway to the town was Snow Hill, where the roads from the eastern parishes met, and the western gateway Charing Cross, where King Street met the sandy plains over which Westerners would travel to come to town. Therefore, King Street and Queen Street formed the core axis for St Helier at this time. Approaches to the town included La Motte Street, Val Plaisant onto Old Street, and St John's Road. The land to the north and southeast of the old town were of considerable value, cultivated as market gardens or planted as orchards.
Improvements to take place during the 17th century included the walling of the Town Church cemetery, the construction of a prison and the paving of important streets. An order of the Royal Court in 1610 led to the improvement of the streets, proprietors being compelled to pave the space before his house to a width of, leading to a non-uniform pattern of paving.
18th century
In 1700, the cattle market was moved from Broad Street to a site on the beach, around 60 to 100 yards to the southwest of the churchyard. It remained here until being relocated to the modern site of Minden Place Car Park in 1841.La Cohue stood on one side of the Royal Square, now rebuilt as the Royal Court and States Chamber. The market cross in the centre of the square was pulled down at the Reformation, and the iron cage for holding prisoners was replaced by a prison gatehouse at the western edge of town. The road now known as Broad Street served as the coast road for the town and may have also been referred to as La Rue d'Égypte being exposed to wind-blown sand. The Richmond Map of 1795 shows that the town at this period was only a small stub at the foot of Mont de la Ville, consisting of the main thoroughfare to the north of the Royal Square, at the time the town market. La Rue du Val and Old St John's Hill were the primary connections up to the north, with La Rue du Val connecting the town to its mill at Grands Vaux. In 1718, John Durell bought a number of St Helier fiefs and constructed a new gated street from King Street to Rue du Val. Maps show that the town experienced a steady increase in densification between 1700 and 1756.
Falle gives an account in the early 18th century of the state of the town
File:George II statue St Helier Jersey.jpg|thumb|The statue of George II in the Royal Square is the zero milestone from which all distances in Jersey are measured.
George II gave £200 towards the construction of a new harbour – previously boats would be beached on a falling tide and unloaded by cart across the sands. A statue of the king by John Cheere was erected in the square in 1751 in gratitude, and the marketplace was renamed Royal Square, although the name has remained Lé Vièr Marchi to this day in Jèrriais. Many of St Helier's road names and street names are bilingual English/French or English/Jèrriais, but some have only one name. The names in the various languages are not usually translations: distinct naming traditions survive alongside each other.
The Royal Square was also the scene of the Battle of Jersey on 6 January 1781, the last attempt by French forces to seize Jersey. John Singleton Copley's epic painting The Death of Major Peirson captures an imaginative version of the scene. Following the 1789 French Revolution, many thousands of French refugees settled in Jersey, many aristocratic and most settling in St Helier. This doubled the number of houses in town and its vicinity; many of the tree-lined lanes leading from the town became built up with new houses and streets.
As harbour construction moved development seaward, a population growth meant that marshland and pasture north of the ribbon of urban activity was built on speculatively. Settlement by English immigrants added quarters of colonial-style town houses to the traditional building stock.
Continuing military threats from France spurred the construction of a citadel fortress, Fort Regent, on the Mont de la Ville, the crag dominating the shallow basin of St Helier.