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"We want to be free... Free to ride our machines without being hassled by the man!" It started out with old classics and lowriders and Harleys converging on the bridge and a car show broke out. Then some knuckle head brought unnecessary attention to the whole thing by lighting a smoke canister / bomb. From the distance I guess it looked as if some one was doing a burn out. The L.A.P.D. comes and breaks up the show. But as the photos prove the SHOW still went on.... UNDER THE BRIDGE.
A new cartoon tribute by artist Stephen B. Whatley celebrating the 1950s TV work of Hollywood actress Paula Hill (USA 1926-2000).
These cartoons were inspired by B&W freeze frames taken from episodes of her TV shows showing on Youtube at one time.
The actress was born Paula Mary Hill in Alabama, USA and came to Hollywood in the 1940s, determined to pursue her ambition to be an actress; first setting up a hot dog stand business as security.
She was credited as Mary Hill in some of her movies ; as she was in her only leading lady role in the now cult sci-fi movie Mesa of Lost Women (1953) and her small role in the classic monster picture, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1952).
A striking beauty the actress possessed a velvet voice and was capable of a whole range of acting in her 40s and 50s pictures- but remains mainly unknown and unsung - except to some classic film buffs.
Her film work seems to have petered out by 1958, though she did much TV work in that decade, including memorable roles on the Burns & Allen Show (1955) and Dragnet (1956) ; and by the early 1960s she was singing in clubs in New York City and acting in the theatre in Los Angeles.
She made a surprise return to the screen in the last decade of her life in two cameos in film maker Steve Burrows's films Soldier of Fortune (1991) and Chump Change (2000).
Artist Stephen B. Whatley is primarily an painter of expressionist oil paintings - whose vibrant work is permanently show-cased outside the Tower of London, through his series of 30 paintings charting the Tower's history that were commissioned in 2000.
The artist has long been fascinated in biographical research of the stars and players of Hollywood's Golden Age - and enjoys creating cartoon tributes to often unsung actors, active in that classic era.
Most recently, the artist has been creating cartoon illustrations commissioned by Hollywood film star Mamie Van Doren (1931-) to be published in her forthcoming memoirs, Secrets of The Goddess.
To see more of the artist's work or contact him, please visit:
a case of going too fast and this is the end result.... Traffic Collision; 12:24PM; 1354 W 46th St; goo.gl/maps/CfBdX88biPm; South Los Angeles; 2 car collision. 30M driver of one vehicle with extensive damage required physical extrication (25 mins) and transported in grave condition. 45M in 2nd vehicle transported in fair condition. All ? = LAPD Inc #1973 NFD; FS 46; Batt 13; South Bureau; Council District 9; E46 E215 T15 E34 RA257 RA246 RA866 HR56 RA33 EM13 BC13 ; CH4; 14; Margaret Stewart - See more at: www.lafd.org/alert/traffic-collision-02222016#sthash.EwFf...
Jasmine Salome (vocals) and Luis Hatred (bass).
Originally appeared in Miss K's Killaz flickrset.
Find out more about Six Inch Killaz here...
Dragnet was an American radio, television and motion picture series, enacting the cases of a dedicated Los Angeles police detective, Sergeant Joe Friday, and his partners. It was perhaps the most famous and influential police procedural drama in media history. The series gave audience members a feel for the boredom and drudgery, as well as the danger and heroism, of police work. The original Dragnet starring Jack Webb as Sgt. Friday ran on radio from June 3, 1949, to February 26, 1957, and on television from January 3, 1952, to August 23, 1959. Webb revived the series which ran from January 12, 1967, to April 16, 1970. [Source: Wikipedia]
a case of going too fast and this is the end result.... Traffic Collision; 12:24PM; 1354 W 46th St; goo.gl/maps/CfBdX88biPm; South Los Angeles; 2 car collision. 30M driver of one vehicle with extensive damage required physical extrication (25 mins) and transported in grave condition. 45M in 2nd vehicle transported in fair condition. All ? = LAPD Inc #1973 NFD; FS 46; Batt 13; South Bureau; Council District 9; E46 E215 T15 E34 RA257 RA246 RA866 HR56 RA33 EM13 BC13 ; CH4; 14; Margaret Stewart - See more at: www.lafd.org/alert/traffic-collision-02222016#sthash.EwFf...
Possible attempted car jacking.
The driver of a Honda Accord panicked when some thugs in another car rolled up on him & his son pointing guns at him so he stepped on the gas and flew down the street not realizing his light was red till too late. Thankfully everyone involved received minor injuries.
The old Bullocks dept. store on Wilshire Boulevard. Now the home of Southwestern Law School.
Completion of construction in 1929. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as No.78000685
A scan from a newspaper clipping. Photo of cars at the Northridge Meadows apartment complex, taken by world famous photojournalist Les Stone.
"We want to be free... Free to ride our machines without being hassled by the man!" It started out with old classics and lowriders and Harleys converging on the bridge and a car show broke out. Then some knuckle head brought unnecessary attention to the whole thing by lighting a smoke canister / bomb. From the distance I guess it looked as if some one was doing a burn out. The L.A.P.D. comes and breaks up the show. But as the photos prove the SHOW still went on.... UNDER THE BRIDGE.
Starring Richard Carlson, King Donovan, Jean Byron, Jarma Lewis, Harry Ellerbe, Leo Britt and Leonard Mudie. Directed by Curt Siodmak.
Curt Siodmak's The Magnetic Monster (1953) is a truly novel science fiction film, in terms of its rather cerebral plot and low-key, quietly intense execution. As much a mystery and, in its first half, a manhunt, as it is a sci-fi-thriller, the movie pushed lots of suspense buttons for viewers in 1953 and still holds up more than a half century later. Richard Carlson (who also co-produced) plays Dr. Jeff Stewart, an agent for the Office of Scientific Investigation. Stewart and his colleague, Dr. Dan Forbes (King Donovan), begin searching for a dangerously radioactive element, which they have good reason to believe is somewhere in the Los Angeles area. They soon learn that this is no ordinary investigation -- among its other attributes, the unknown element generates enough radiation to kill, and also manifests a powerful magnetic field. The trail leads them to Dr. Howard Denker (Leonard Mudie), a rogue scientist who, working on his own, has created a new isotope of an element called serranium, which proves to be not only highly radioactive, but dangerously unstable in ways that science has never seen before. Every 11 hours, the serranium mass enters a growth cycle requiring massive amounts of energy, which it obtains by absorbing the energy from the atomic structure of any matter around it, releasing huge amounts of radiation in the process. The serranium mass doubles in size with each cycle, doubling its energy needs in the process, as well as the potential destructiveness of the next cycle. The danger lies not only in the potential for destruction in the serranium's rapidly increasing energy absorbtion, but its ever-increasing mass, which, at some point, will threaten to unbalance the Earth itself, in its rotation and orbit. Long before that, however, the resulting radiation is going to start killing large numbers of people, and the destructive force accompanying it will threaten to split the Earth's surface apart. Stewart and Forbes soon recognize that the only hope they have of stopping the process is to get ahead of it, by bombarding the serranium with enough energy to force it to divide into two relatively stable elements. The only possible source of sufficient energy is the world's largest cyclotron, which has been built by the Canadian government in Nove Scotia -- but is even it powerful enough to do the job, and can they get the deadly isotope there in time?
This is the first sci-fi movie of the year 1953. This would prove to be a very full year for sci-fi fans, with some classics (famous and infamous) emerging. Magnetic Monster (MM) is the first of three sci-fi movies Ivan Tors wrote & produced. Tors, perhaps more famous for his Flipper productions, had written dramas and romances prior to this. MM, Tors' entry into the sci-fi genre definitely brings in a different mood.
MM is first of an O.S.I. trilogy (Office of Scientific Investigation).Tors approached sci-fi as an FBI drama, spinning it as adventures of "A-men" (A as in Atom) -- detectives in the field of science. The opening voiceover provides their motivation, "New dangers face mankind, dangers which challenge his very existence..." With the almost constant narration, MM has an almost Dragnet-like flavor. (Coincidentally, Dragnet was a popular TV show at this same time.)
Synopsis
Mysterious magnetic happenings at a local hardware store eventually gets a couple OSI agents called to the scene. They find a dead man in an upstairs apartment "lab" and traces of an unknown isotope. They trace this mystery to a Dr. Denker who was trying to fly his unstable isotope back to a university lab. Denker is dying of radiation poisoning, but tells A-Man Stuart how he accidently created the isotope and, more importantly, how it periodically "grows" by sucking in all the energy around it, converting energy to matter, doubling itself in size. With each cycle, the isotope, called Serenium, demands twice as much energy and grows twice as dense. Denker's last words were: "Keep it under constant electric charge. It's hungry. It has to be fed constantly. Or, it will reach out it's magnetic arms and grab at anything within its reach, and kill it. It's monstrous."
The OSI try to follow this advice, but eventually the Serenium grows too big. Even a whole city's power grid is not enough to contain it. If left alone, the Serenium would keep growing until it's mass threw off the rotation of the earth, sending it wobbling off into space. They have only 11 hours (the period between absorption-growth cycles) to fly the Serenium to an experimental cyclotron in Nova Scotia, which is hoped can produce enough power to overfeed the isotope, causing it to split into two stable isotopes. With much drama, the Canadian Deltatron is pushed beyond it's limits, destroying itself, and the underground lab, but also accomplishing the mission. The magnet monster was stopped.
There's much about MM that is very different from the usual sci-fi. These differences make it fun. First off, the "monster" is inanimate. It's an isotope. It's quite a challenge to make a non-living thing the frightening villain in a story. Tors actually does a pretty good job. A similar "monster" film Monolith Monsters (1957) would try this too, but with less success.
Also, the Deltatron is pretty cool. It seems grander than a low-budget B-movie would usually have, which turns out to be true. It's recycled footage from a 1934 German film Gold, which featured a huge electrical generator. (the premise of Gold is a huge generator used to turn lead into gold.) Tors liked this footage and used it. He had some costuming changes and stage sets built to harmonize with the Gold footage, and spliced them in. That does explain the rather almost Metropolis-like expressionist look of the Deltatron. And, why all the characters start wearing overcoats and fedoras. Still, it makes for some good watching.
The whole Serenium grown, feeding on things around it, until it threatens to destroy the world, is a pretty obvious metaphor for the nuclear age. At the end of the film, Stuart talks with his pregnant wife about families and multiplying. "Multiplication. Done through love, the result is a baby -- a lovely thing. But without love, done through hate or with fear, the result is a monster..." There's your Cold War / nuclear moral for the story.
Sure, some of the science they spout comes across as techno-babble and seems contradictory at times, but this isn't a big detraction. It's a movie after all. If we can suspend our critical inner lab-coats to accept aliens and flying saucers, or "atomic" rockets to other planets, then it's not such a big task to accept an isotope which can convert energy into matter. The moral of the tale is how man ought not be tampering in nuclear things he doesn't really understand. So, our not understanding how Serenium works should be expected.
MM follows the fine old B-movie tradition of using military stock footage, including the mismatches that often result. One such mismatch is the plane the isotope is flown to Nova Scotia on. They load the Serenium onto an F-80 Shooting Star (straight wings, tip tanks, intakes on the sides), but all of the in-flight footage is of an F-86 Saber (swept wings, no tanks and an intake in the nose.) Yet at refueling, yet another Saber is shown which HAS wing tanks. Atop this, the narrator is telling how the jet had to drop its wing tanks. (?!) Perhaps audiences in 1953 were not so critical. Any shiny aluminum jet was the same as any other.
MM is a pretty good B-movie. It kicked off 1953, but would become overshadowed by that year's more famous films, Invaders from Mars and War of the Worlds. That's too bad too. It deserves better than the obscurity it's gotten.
While the patrol supervisor makes the necessary notifications, the primary officer gets all the details from the RP.
I'm sure the guy from Nature Exhibits Exclusive Direct is trying to make his drop and get out of Dodge.
Wild Waters Aquarium & Convention Center
Reptile Rescue
City of Mystic Beach
Click on the notes for (10) more views:
Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II
Olympus M.14-42mm F3.5-5.6 II R
While cruzing the Blvd. a motorscooter kop's Remington 870 Pump action pistol grip Shotgun disengaged from the locking mechanism on the bikes rack and fell into the street in the area of Bronson Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard in LAPD’s Southwest Division. The gun was picked up by a bystander and he took off running with it and a large LAPD search and destroy mission ensued .... I mean a large search ensued and suspect was later caught and the shotgun retrieved.
While cruzing the Blvd. a motorscooter kop's Remington 870 Pump action pistol grip Shotgun disengaged from the locking mechanism on the bikes rack and fell into the street in the area of Bronson Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard in LAPD’s Southwest Division. The gun was picked up by a bystander and he took off running with it and a large LAPD search and destroy mission ensued .... I mean a large search ensued and suspect was later caught and the shotgun retrieved.
"We want to be free... Free to ride our machines without being hassled by the man!" It started out with old classics and lowriders and Harleys converging on the bridge and a car show broke out. Then some knuckle head brought unnecessary attention to the whole thing by lighting a smoke canister / bomb. From the distance I guess it looked as if some one was doing a burn out. The L.A.P.D. comes and breaks up the show. But as the photos prove the SHOW still went on.... UNDER THE BRIDGE.
A 1937 advertisement for Chesterfield cigarettes.
Note what her dress is made of - roll your own?
Chesterfield cigarettes were first manufactured and sold in 1883 by the Drummond Tobacco Company [St. Louis, Missouri USA] and later made by Liggett & Meyers Tobacco Company who then sold the rights to Phillip Morris.
Chesterfield cigarettes were one of the three most popular cigarettes and a favorite of Hollywood stars such as Lucille Ball, James Dean, Humphrey Bogart etc.
Chesterfield sponsored many early radio and television shows such as Glenn Miller’s Radio Show and some editions of Dragnet and Gunsmoke.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3515/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Paramount.
Mary Brian (1906-2002) was an American actress and film star with dark brown curls and blue/grey eyes, who made the transition from silent films to sound films. She was dubbed 'The Sweetest Girl in Pictures'.
Mary Brian was born Louise Byrdie Dantzler, in Corsicana, Texas, in 1906. She was the daughter of Taurrence J. Dantzler and Louise B. Dantzler. Her brother was Taurrence J. Dantzler, Jr. Her father died when she was one month old and the family later moved to Dallas. In the early 1920s, they moved to Long Beach, California. Mary had intended to become an illustrator but that was laid aside when at age 16 she was discovered in a local bathing beauty contest. One of the judges was famous film star Esther Ralston who was to play her mother in the upcoming Peter Pan and who became a lifelong friend. She didn't win the $25 prize in the contest but Ralston said, "you've got to give the little girl something." So, her prize was to be interviewed by director Herbert Brenon for a role in Peter Pan. Brenon was recovering from eye surgery, and she spoke with him in a dimly lit room. "He asked me a few questions, Is that your hair? Out of the blue, he said, I would like to make a test. Even to this day, I will never know why I was that lucky. They had made tests of every ingénue in the business for Wendy. He had decided he would go with an unknown. It would seem more like a fairy tale. It wouldn't seem right if the roles were to be taken by someone they (the audience) knew or was divorced. I got the part. They put me under contract." The studio renamed her Mary Brian and cast her as Wendy Darling in the silent film version of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan (Herbert Brenon, 1924). There she starred with Betty Bronson and Esther Ralston, and the three of them stayed close for the rest of their lives. Ralston described both Bronson and Brian as 'very charming people'. The studio said she was age 16 instead of 18, because the latter sounded too old for the role, then signed her to a long-term motion picture contract. Brian played Fancy Vanhern, daughter of Percy Marmont, in Brenon's The Street of Forgotten Men (Herbert Brenon, 1925), which had newcomer Louise Brooks in an uncredited debut role as a moll.
Mary Brian was dubbed "The Sweetest Girl in Pictures." On loan-out to MGM, she played a college belle, Mary Abbott, opposite William Haines and Jack Pickford in Brown of Harvard (1926). She was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1926, along with Mary Astor, Dolores Costello, Joan Crawford, Dolores del Río, Janet Gaynor, and Fay Wray. During her years at Paramount, Brian appeared in more than 40 films as the lead, the ingenue or co-star. She worked with Brenon again when she played Isabel in P. C. Wren's Beau Geste (Herbert Brenon, 1926) starring Ronald Colman. That same year she made the war comedy Behind the Front (Eddie Sutherland, 1926) with Wallace Beery, and Harold Teen (1926). In 1928, she played ingenue Alice Deane in Forgotten Faces (Ewald André Dupont, 1928) opposite Clive Brook, her sacrificing father, with Olga Baclanova as her vixen mother and William Powell as Froggy. Brian's first sound film was Varsity (Frank Tuttle, 1928), with part-sound and talking sequences, opposite Buddy Rogers. After successfully making the transition to sound, she co-starred with Gary Cooper, Walter Huston and Richard Arlen in one of the earliest Westerns with sound, The Virginian (Victor Fleming, 1929). In it, she played a spirited frontier heroine, schoolmarm Molly Stark Wood, who was the love interest of the Virginian (Cooper).
Mary Brian co-starred in several hits during the 1930s. She played Gwen Cavendish in George Cukor’s comedy The Royal Family of Broadway (1930) with Ina Claire and Fredric March. A thinly disguised caricature of the private lives of the Barrymore dynasty, it hit the mark to the extent that Ethel Barrymore even threatened to sue Paramount. Brian then appeared as herself in Paramount's all-star revue Paramount on Parade (Edmund Goulding, a.o., 1930), as Peggy Grant in Lewis Milestone’s comedy The Front Page (1931) with Adolphe Menjou and Pat O'Brien. After her contract with Paramount ended in 1932, Brian decided to freelance, which was unusual in a period when multi-year contracts with one studio were common. That same year, she appeared on the vaudeville stage at New York's Palace Theatre. Also in the same year, she starred in Manhattan Tower. Arguably her last good picture was the romantic comedy Hard to Handle (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933), with James Cagney as a grifter. Other film roles include Murial Ross, aka Murial Rossi, in Shadows of Sing Sing (Phil Rosen, 1933), in which she received top billing, Gloria Van Dayham in College Rhythm (Norman Taurog, 1934), Yvette Lamartine in Charlie Chan in Paris (Lewis Seiler, 1935) with Warner Oland, Hope Wolfinger, W. C. Fields’s daughter, in Man on the Flying Trapeze (Clyde Bruckman, 1935), Sally Barnaby in Spendthrift (Raoul Walsh, 1936) opposite Henry Fonda, and Doris in Navy Blues (Ralph Staub, 1937), in which she received top billing. In 1936, she went to England and made three films, including The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss (Alfred Zeisler, 1936) in which she starred opposite Cary Grant, to whom she became engaged at one stage. Her final film of the 1930s was Affairs of Cappy Ricks (Ralph Staub, 1937) although she auditioned unsuccessfully for the part that would go to Janet Gaynor in A Star is Born (William A. Wellman, 1937).
When World War II hit in 1941, Mary Brian began traveling to entertain the troops, ending up spending most of the war years traveling the world with the U.S.O., and entertaining servicemen from the South Pacific to Europe, including Italy and North Africa. Commenting on those events that had occurred over fifty years ago, she said in 1996, I was with Charlie Ruggles in Okinawa. And I was on the island of Tinian when they dropped the atomic bomb. Colonel Paul Tibbets, who was the pilot and the officer in charge [of dropping the bomb] took Charlie and me on the plane the next day, and nobody had been allowed in that encampment. So I was on the Enola Gay. Flying to England on a troop shoot, Mary got caught in the Battle of the Bulge and spent the Christmas of 1944 with the soldiers fighting that battle. She made several pictures for Poverty Row companies such as Majestic and Monogram, including the low-budget potboiler I Escaped from the Gestapo (Harold Young, 1943). Her last performance on the silver screen was in Dragnet (Leslie Goodwins, 1947), a B-movie in which she played Anne Hogan opposite Henry Wilcoxon. Over the course of 22 years, Brian had appeared in more than 79 films. Like many 'older' actresses, during the 1950s Brian created a career for herself in television. Perhaps her most notable role was playing the title character's mother in Meet Corliss Archer in 1954. She also dedicated much time to portrait painting after her acting years. Though she was engaged numerous times and was linked romantically to numerous Hollywood men, including Cary Grant and silent film actor Jack Pickford, Brian had only two husbands: magazine illustrator Jon Whitcomb (for six weeks in 1941) and film editor George Tomasini (from 1947 until his death in 1964). After retiring from the screen for good, she devoted herself to her husband's career; Tomasini worked as film editor for Alfred Hitchcock on the classics Rear Window (1954) and Psycho (1960). She died of natural causes in 2002 at a retirement home in Del Mar, California at the age of 96. She is interred in the Eternal Love Section at the Hollywood Hills Cemetery, Los Angeles, overlooking Burbank.
Sources: I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
La Rocque, at the south-east corner of the island, was once one of only two centres of population on the east of Jersey, the other being Gorey. In between lay only farmsteads. Today the whole coastline from St Helier to Gorey is developed, with very few open spaces, as can clearly be seen in the photograph on the left. At La Rocque the road meets the coast, overlooking the small harbour. This was a refuge for fishing vessels from the Middle Ages, although no jetty was built until the 19th century.
It is interesting to note that before a pier was built at St Aubin's Fort in the late 17th century, La Rocque, unprotected as it was, must have been the island's safest anchorage because boats from there would often be called on to carry messages to Guernsey
Name
Nobody is quite sure how La Rocque got its name. It would suggest a reference to a single rock, but there are none in the area, which is very flat and low-lying. Certainly there is an extensive offshore reef, but if the area was named after that it would surely have been Les Roches. There are other placenames in the area which refer to a rock and it is believed that there was probably a large outcrop the size of a modern house in a field in the vicinity, which was demolished for building stone and to allow the field to be more easily cultivated.
It was at La Rocque, one of the few strategic locations along the east coast lacking a defensive tower, that the French landed on the eve of The Battle of Jersey in 1781. On the day of the battle a second engagement took place at La Rocque as the French rearguard was attacked and defeated by the island's defenders.
Harbour
The development of La Rocque as a harbour followed similar lines to the small fishing ports on the north coast. Boat owners used the harbour, perhaps with some rudimentary wooden jetty; the States became aware that goods were moving through the port without payment of dues and appointed a supervisor to collect them; the boat owners decided that it they had to pay for using the port they wanted better facilities and petitioned the States; the States gave in, and after protracted delays, built a proper pier.
The first documentary reference to La Rocque as a harbour is from 1602 when the States appointed a supervisor for Le Havre de la Pecherie de la Rocque. Five years later nearby King's tenants were ordered to find two boatmen to carry messages to Guernsey when required.
Petition
Here references in official documents cease for over two ceturies, until in 1825 Grouville parishioners sent a petition to the States complaining that over 40 boats based at La Rocque were exposed to southerly gales. Fishing gear had been lost and one boat had broken free of its moorings and drifted across to the French coast. They suggested that for only £200 the two large rocks in the harbour could be joined with a wall to provide protection from gales, and also to reduce erosion of the coastline.
Typically the Harbours Committee came up with a more expensive plan, including a dry stone wall and parapet, at a cost of £500, and after receiving the approval of the States the work was put out to tender and Abraham de la Mare started work in the spring of 1827. Progress was good and the committee extended the contract to provide for an extended parapet and paving.
But, as with other piers built at this time elsewhere in the island, the structure was neither strong enough nor sufficiently substantial to withstand the force of severe gales and so much damage was done at La Rocque in 1839 and 1841 that the States were faced with paying for repairs as well as the construction of a 112 foot extension to the structure. This work was undertaken in 1843, and three years later there was further damage, and the construction of s slipway was ordered at the same time as repairs were undertaken.
Like their counterparts in the north coast fishing ports, the Le Rocquais fishermen were still not happy, and in 1873 they launched another petition calling for the construction of a breakwater to provide the harbour with greater protection from heavy seas. However, no further development of the harbour followed, and it remained as it is today; still used by a small number of professional fishermen, and providing moorings for leisure vessels.
Farmers and fishermen
Vingtaine de la Rocque has long been home to farmers and fishermen. It has seen the building of churches to cater to the faith of the local population, the railway to develop links with St Helier, the harbour to shelter the fishing fleet and the network of Martello towers to protect the coast from invasion.
The Vingtaine stretches from Fauvic in the north to the Grouville - St Clement border in the west with the coastline on the east and to the south. The Vingtaine also administers the Minquiers.
La Rocque has strong links with the sea. Early States of Jersey minutes from 1602 mention a Jean du Parc as the supervisor for the harbour and fisheries of La Rocque. The 1795 Duke of Richmond map shows some fortifications in place near the current harbour but no man-made structures to protect the boats of the fishing fleet.
The States of Jersey developed the harbours at St Aubin, Gorey and St Helier during the 18th and 19th centuries and by 1825 the inhabitants of Grouville decided that development also needed to take place at La Rocque.
Petition
The parishioners sent a petition to the States pointing out that the 40 or more boats that were moored at La Rocque were subject to southerly gales. The petition asked that a wall be built between the rocks Le Groznet and La Grande Sambiere. The Harbours Committee recommended the plan to the States in 1825 and on 7th October 1826 they approved that a Harbour be built at a cost of not more than £500. The contract for works was awarded to Abraham de la Mare.
In 1873 a petition signed by a large number of La Rocque fishermen was presented to the States asking for a breakwater to be built. The States established a Committee to look into the costs of the work. The Committee took some time to explore different options before presenting an act to the States calling for the establishment of a breakwater in February 1881.
The Archive holds a letter from the Attorney-General to the Lieut-Governor dated 9 June 1881. which advises Her Majesty to confirm the Act of the States to build a ‘shelter pier’ at La Rocque. Royal approval must have been granted as finally Frederick Benest was appointed to carry out the works for the sum of £3,850 in November 1881.
The fishing fleet was a vital part of life at La Rocque and the fishermen were vocal in their views of any changes to legislation that effected their livelihood. A petition to the States of Jersey dated January 1898 from the fishermen of La Rocque and Rozel concerns the proposed Law on Fishing presented to the States by Deputy E B Renouf. The petition concerns the use of dragnets and rakes as means of fishing and the effects of these on the young fish around the Island.
The petition gives us the names of the La Rocque fishermen of the late 19th century with the following individuals signing; Nicolas de Ste Croix, Thomas Gallichan, Joe Le Clercq, P Marin, Edward Mallet, George Mourant, G Marie, Charles de St Croix, Elie Jarvis, Philippe Vivian, W Gray, Elie Gallichan, F G Gallichan, J Lequer, J P Watton, E Gallichan, A Ahier, C Gallichan, Elie Le Clercq, Frank Mallet, Thomas Gallichan, Charles Le Riche.
Les Minquiers
The 19th century fishing fleet had established strong links with the Minquiers. Traditionally the fleet would leave La Rocque for Maîtresse Ile on a Monday staying to catch fish until the Friday. The fleet would then return to the mainland on a Friday with the weeks catch which would be sold locally or to merchants. Left over fish would be taken to St Helier by horse and cart or by the railway and it was then sold and shipped to either England or St Malo.
The importance of the sea to the inhabitants of the Vingtaine is reflected in the establishment of two shipbuilding yards in the area. Firstly the yard of John Filleul and Thomas de la Mare operating at La Rocque from 1836 – 1837 and secondly that of Daniel Le Sueur operating from 1858 – 1884. Le Sueur’s yard built over 30 vessels.
New churches
In the 19th century the religious lives of the community were enhanced by the building of two new churches – the La Rocque Methodist Chapel and the Church of St Peter La Rocque. The Methodist Chapel was the first to be built and the influence of Methodism in the area can be seen as early as 1808 when services were held in the house of Moise Gibaut. Moises’ house was burned down and replaced by Beechwood.
Services moved to Gorey in the 1820s but as the popularity of Methodism in the Island increased meetings began to be held at La Rocque again in 1833. Initially meetings were held in a room in La Rocque Villa which was rented from François Mallet. Services then took place at Shirley Villa, the property of Mrs Philip Labey.
A site for a chapel was purchased in October 1837 with the funds being raised by subscription from the local worshippers. The foundation stone of the Chapel was laid in June 1838 and the Chapel was formerly opened for Divine Service on 4th November 1838.
The growth in Methodism at La Rocque prompted, Abraham Le Sueur, Rector of Grouville for much of the second half of the 19th century, to initiate the building of a new Church of England church in the area – St Peter La Rocque.
The minutes of the Ecclesiastical Assembly of Grouville record the date of the laying of the foundation stone of the Chapel of St Peter La Rocque. The entry for 6th January 1852 states that the foundation stone was laid by Lieutenant-General Touzel assisted by the Rector of the Parish, Abraham Le Sueur, Rectors from other parishes and many other principals in the Parish of Grouville.
Inns
Entertainment in the Vingtaine has been and continues to be provided at Seymour. La Rocque Inn, or Mary Janes as it was known, is still remembered in the area. The Inn was located opposite what is now the Seymour Inn in the car park used by visitors to Seymour Tower.
Philip Ahier’s book, Historical and Topographical Hotels and Inns in Jersey includes some memories of the establishment
‘Mary Jane had the reputation of being a martinet: she permitted no unseemly behaviour in her establishment and soon ejected any male who became cantankerous. My father used to recall how many a fisherman’s wife or farmer’s wife could call to the inn to ascertain whether their husbands were imbibing not too freely and not too well and then would proceed to bring them home!’
Mary Jane was Mary Jane Le Vesconte who was born in 1864. Her father Charles is first listed as living at La Rocque Inn in the 1881 census with Mary Jane, her sister Jane Mary and mother - also Jane Mary. By 1901 Mary Jane is listed as the Hotel Keeper at La Rocque Inn with Lizzie Bertram living on site as a bar worker. The Inn was eventually inherited by Mary Jane’s great niece who sold the property to Ann Street Brewery in 1958.
Services were also an important part of the area. La Rocque post office was established in 1891 by the Postmaster General in London with George H Le Geyt as the first Sub-Postmaster with a salary of £5 10s per year. George was a grocer who lived at Seymour Place, 36, Beach Road with his wife Isabella.
French invasion
No picture of La Rocque would be complete without a mention of the area’s military history. Famously known as the landing point for de Rullecourt’s invasion of the Island in January 1781, which led to the Battle of Jersey, the area has a number of military fortifications.
Records dating from as early as 1539 show the importance of defending La Rocque. On 13th May 1539 the parishioners of Grouville including Jacques Amy, Philippe Jutize, Thomas Baudains, Johan Jutize, Richard Amy, Philippe Amy, Francois Amy, Johan Payn and Blaise Laffoley promised the Lieutenant Governor that they would start to build a defensive works at the bays between La Rocque and Mont Orgueil.
Jean Chevalier in 1646 records that Prince Charles and his council examined the coasts to see which points were vulnerable to enemy attack. They directed the building of a fortress at La Rocque. Apparently when the building began they unearthed evidence of an earlier structure – possibly the 1539 fortifications.
Henry Seymour Conway, Governor of Jersey in the late 18th century, obtained approval for his plans to construct coastal towers around in the Island in 1778. A significant number of Conway towers can be seen on the coast of the Vingtaine de la Rocque today.
On 28 January 1780 just a year before the de Rullecourt landing the Constable of Grouville was ordered by the States of Jersey to place a store and magazine at La Rocque and Rocque-Platte. Platte Rocque Tower itself was built after the Battle of Jersey and replaced a guard house which had stood on the spot.
Crenshaw Center shops and anchor stores like Broadway Dept store, May Co., Woolworth and many retail stores opened in November 1947. Then in 1988 got a major remodel including a pedestrian walk way that connected the Broadway with the May Co. Dept. stores that crossed over Martin Luther King Blyd. (formerly Santa Barbara Blvd.)
Currently closed/ simi open new stores retail businesses on hold due to Covid-19.
Any comments on past history, progress and updates welcome.