The story I didn’t tell yesterday...

The cream House is Hirzel House and the white one is Maison Allaire. Both were at one time owned by Jean Allaire but are now offices. Sibyl Collings, Allaire’s great great granddaughter, who became the Dame of Sark was born at Hirzel House because there wasn’t a resident doctor in Sark in 1884.

Jean Allaire was a renegade privateer, who though a Channel Islander had a reputation for running a French flag when he decided to capture an English ship. By fair means or foul he amassed a fortune. As well as the houses in the photograph he at one time owned an old house called The Mount. The Mount was supposed to be haunted by a victim of Allaire’s proverbial callousness. The story went that the ghost was an old woman who had gone one day to implore mercy for her son who had been accused of sheep-stealing.Allaire and his boon companions were carousing in an upper room , and when she appeared to plead for her son they pushed her down the stairs and her neck was broken. In the every watches of moonless nights, her body could be heard bumping from stair to stair. Apart from the ghost there was an ominous superstition that if the driveway gates were ever closed the head of the family at the house would die. 
The Mount was eventually bought for Government House. When Sir Charles Sackville-West (later Lord Sackville) came to Guernsey as Governor he had the staircase demolished and the drive gates removed. On either side of the entrance he placed two sentry boxes, and a bottle of wine was secretly buried on the spot to remove the spell.
There are still no gates at the entrance to Government House.