BARRY JONES

Le Catioroc, La Perrelle, Guernsey, CI

Le Catioroc Pictures

Le Catioroc notes #1

If you happen to be the owner of that Adam and Charles Black book called The Channel Islands, painted by Henry B. Wimbush and described by Edith F. Carey, you are among the lucky ones today and you should be proud of it because these excellent books are quite out of print.  At sales, our refugee rich in the Island are giving large sums for them and they are quite sought after in England as well as in the Island.

I had better say here that Messrs. Blacks brought out exactly similar books of all the different counties of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales and they are all unobtainable, unless in sales.  The original price of these beautiful books was 12s.6d.

Well then, if you have one of these and turn to the reproduction of Mr Wimbush's water colour painting beside page 16, you will see a picture of La Perelle.  Take a good look at it.  All those buildings are still there.  The stream, La Perelle itself, is there, but is piped under the road and all those charming cottages are obscured by greenhouses, greenhouse chimneys, bungalows, telephone poles, television aerials and down have come the trees.  On the hill, which ends in a quarry, that is still there, you will see a little cottage watch-house.  That is Le Catioroc.  That view is, to me, Perelle today.

I am extremely blessed in that, as I drive by, approaching or leaving that district, I am completely unaware of the horrors of progress.

My association with it began during the First War, when, for the first time, I was really aware of it and the strange charm it had for me at any rate, above anything else in the Island or in any other Island.

I had known it, of course, before the First War, but when the Royal Guernsey Light Infantry was training before going to England and on to France, the Regiment, very naturally, went for long route marches and covered the Island pretty thoroughly in exercises, manoeuvres, nights out and so on.

A time came when men were trained to such an extent that they were ready for a march right around the Island at the end of their training.  There was never any difficulty in my getting the job of taking the party, as it were.  Other officers looked on me as a crazy fool and let him walk twenty-four miles if he wants to!

I used to time the march round the Island so that we would have rests about every hour in rather nice places, but then, in 1915, 16 and 17, everywhere in Guernsey was pretty nice.  But for our cooking of our meals in the field, from awful little tin canisters, and the meals were awful too, I always chose to stop near the slip at Perelle where Mr Clarke's most excellent garage now stands.  Mr Clarke's most excellent garage is one of the few signs of progress which I welcome, there are very few other signs of progress in the Island that I welcome.

At that time I had no association with Le Catioroc whatever.  I knew it aws there and I knew it was vacant and I knew that cattle used it for shelter or potatoes were stored there and that brambles grew in and out of windows, and it had been a shamble since 1914.  It was Government property and any occupants had cleared out during the War as they were from Martello towers and old forts round the Island, such as le Marchant, Hommet, Richmond and so on.

About September, 1918, I was back in the Island from France and thought I would like to have some refuge for when the War was over.  Armistice appeared to be coming along.  And I went to the Officer Commanding the Royal Engineers, Major Carey Curtiss, who was in charge of all such Government property and told him that I wanted a very little place, little refuge in which I it would be possible to live.

I had not yet decided to stay on in the Army, which I did until July 1921, and I had no intention of going back to a City desk in London and I felt that I was getting rather old to pursue the only thing I had ever wanted to, ie. the theatrical profession and, in any case, the War was not yet over.

Major Carey Curtiss very kindly said "I have the very thing for you.  No.4 Martello Tower at L'Ancresse" and I said, "I know it well, but that is exactly what I don't want.  If I am there , my friends will be dropping in as they pass along playing golf."  I still played in those days and I could see the whole thing becoming a sort of miniature club  house or Nineteenth Holes, and it had no property and that was just what I didn't want.

So he said "The only other thing is that ruin on the hill above Perelle village - you could have that for 6/- a year, a peppercorn rent.  It has no property except four feet around the walls, a right of way across the field in any direction and what is always known as its own front garden path, a path between two rows of large boulders which leads to the Chemin Le Roi, the lane which goes over the top of the hill and ends in the fields".

So I went to see it on my bicycle, motor cars were very rare in the Island then, and I think busses had not yet started, they were nothing but a fruit van with school benches in a row and no cover at all.  I got there on a rather dull afternoon and pushed my way through the brambles and bushes to the door, through a through which the cattle had pushed their way for several years.

Incidentally, among my men in the R.G.L.I. I had one who had lived there with his wife, in those two minute rooms 6'6" X 6'6" and 6'6" X 9' I think they are, and brought up seven bouncing healthy children, some of whom are alive and living in this district today, God bless them!

It was called the "The Old Watch House", though I shall get to that later.  It had been empty for the four years of the War, was knee deep in cattle manure inside and out, no windows, no door.  Brambles grew up the windows inside and out and it was all pretty sad, but not to me.

All my life I have had strange sensations, I won't say quite say visions, but very strong impressions  and as i stood in the door, looking into the large room, I remeber feeling , shoulder high to weeds and ivies and things, a vison of what I wanted for my home in the firture.  A home to which I could retire.  It was an overwhelming impression which I felt and feel to this day.  I wil;l not pretend that I thought that I saw that picture by Mr Norman Wilkoinson hanging just there, or that picture by Mr Wimbush hanging just there over the foot of my bed or any of the furntiutre, but I knew that was to be my home.

Having secured it at the princely sum of 6/- a year from the Government, I took my Mother out there.  How we got there I don't know, but I imagine in the admirable taxi or car, they were not called taxis then, run by Mr Steve Duquemin, one of Guernsey's most interesting and eminent sons.

By this time I was feeling a little letdown after my elation and revelation, call it what you will, but my Mother  was in most spritely mood, wanting to know how I found it, why and all that sort of thing and how interesting it was.  She knew it well!  Asking her how she knew it well, she said "Oh, my Mother used to bring me here for picnics.  We used to walk all the way from La Piette and bring our tea" and she ran to the edge of the field and said, "Down there ought to be Mrs So-and-so, and over there somebody else, and there should be the bakery" and on and on she prattled and I said "Why, the way your Mother brought me was because her Mother brought her".

Well, this is all quite remarkable when you realise the tremendous sensation I had had when I saw it.  The affection of, at any rate, three generations before myself had, I am quite sure, something to do with my extraordinary sensation and my feeling that here was home, when I could have a home.  And I had not even got a profession!

I took my Mother's advice and went down to where she assured me there was a carpenter's shop.  There was, and in a day or so. Mr Asplant and his boys had cleared the whole place up, white-washed it , put in windows and door and there was a spick and span little cottage with two spotless rooms with a passage in between.

The original building had been a watch house, built in 1739.  A little square stone hut, walls 2'6" thick, of Guernsey granite, two little windows facing east and west, a fire place on the south wall, and its half-door facing north over the bay, from which the Customs Officer, sentry, call him what you will, could watch the privateers and pirates and general ruffianry of the west coast.

Later, in 1795, with the Napoleonic scare, the Island was much fortified by Martello towers, forts, batteries, gun emplacements and the Catioroc watch house found itself harbouring soldiers in its additional passage and larger room.  They must have been the garrison of the gun emplacements and the batteries of the district, and I have, in my possession, neatly written lists of the names of the troops responsible for the upkeep of these fortifications.

Nothing had happened after the Napoleonic scare had subsided and I don't know what had happened to the cottage as it is now was, rather than a stone hut, in the intervening years, but it is known that it was used as a dwelling before the family of seven to which I referred already.

I knew there was a rather old bed-ridden man who lived there in some squalor, because I know that an uncle of mine, Dr Le Page, used to visit him regularly.  There aws nothing particularly wrong with the old man, except, perhaps, he did not want to work, and he scrounged around somehow and my uncle and my aunt loved the view as I grew to love it eventually.

The old man apparently had enough to live on but just did not care.  He was eased very much by small boys who were not any more than my age and some of then are still living around today, and they used to shout through his windows which had no glass, only sacking, and run in and annoy him as he rested on his jonquiere by the fire.  Naturally he got annoyed and form the show he put up, he became known as "the bloodsucker".  And Le Catioroc, for a long time, long after he had gone, and I had it, was known as the bloodsucker's house.  "Oh Mr Jones, you live in the bloodsucker's house".  Not a pretty title, but I was proud of it!

There is a story, quite true, I am sure, because I have seen the results, of how the old man used to cook himself a meal once a week, and that was on Sundays.  There was an odd coincidence that on Sunday mornings, some wooden mallet would be missing from some field nearby.  I must remind you that in those days, Guernsey cows were all tethered and there was literally nothing for miles around, you might say, but fields and hedges with lovely tress.  Even when I came here fifty years ago, there aws no greenhouse to be seen, except two still standing this side of Richmond.  Each field had its own mallet, made of wood, for the cows used the field.  Bit by bit, all the mallets were disappearing.  The small boys got on to what was happening and one day they got hold of a mallet, bored a hole in it, put in some gunpowder, blocked up the hole again and replaced the mallet in the filed.

Then, to their glee, one Sunday morning it had disappeared!  It was known that the old man cooked by an open fire.  The little boys, waited outside breathlessly, and were rewarded by a loud but muffled boom inside the cottage where there was an open grate.  A stone was blown out of the archway of that open grate.  I personally never used the grate , bout I left the gap there, looking like a tooth missing until 1966, when I had the grate remodelled.  That is as far as I know of the bloodsucker.

I stayed in the Army until July 1921 and went on the stage.  For the succeeding years, I used Le Catioroc as an extremely comfortable little camp site.  I had telephone and water laid on, not yet electricity.

During my frequent visits, I would spend an afternoon at the Vallon with Sir Victor Carey, the Bailiff, and his house there was the original picture from page 16 of La Perelle, painted by Henry B Winbush.  I never failed to say "Sir Victor, that is my picture because that is my house!".  And, when the old Bailiff died, Mr Michael Carey, arrived here one windy, wet Sunday afternoon, hugging a large parcel, saying "Father would like you to have this" - and there was the original Wimbush from the Edith Carey book!  It hangs at the foot of my bed, I see it last thing art night and first thing in the morning and I think I had to decide to have only one thing in my possession again, it would be that original picture of Perelle as I first knew it and as I still see it.

Just as in each parish in Guernsey you get districts known by the name of something particular, you get Les Rouvets, Le Hurel and those sort of names all over the Island, in St. Saviour's, you have certainly Le Catioroc district - there is a Rue de Catioroc, and the hill; it gets its name from the Norsemen who had a camp the rock top.  Quite clearly they were not the first inhabitants.  The people of the cromlechs and the dolmens were long before that but the camp on the rock was a Norse camp, the earthworks of which were very clearly visible up to the German occupation.

They widened thing, pulled old stones down, pulled a menhir down which Miss Carey would call La Dame Du Catioroc for no other reason than that it was a pillar of stone.  She told me that as far as was known, the whole top of this Catioroc hill held the largest collection of prehistoric stones, whatever they represented in the Island, and they were known as Les Portes du Catioroc.  Over one hundred years ago, when the sea walls were built, and the coast road constructed, granite quarried from at Perelle and , to this day, there is a large quarry there, disused but the removal of stones from the top of the hill removed a very great deal of Les Portes du Catioroc - in fact, very few stones were recognisable.  There are stone sin the lane going up to the top which Miss Carey could account for, but thought they might be of Roman origin, but if they were, they would be nothing like the age of the original people who inhabited our Island.

Very few people know that our Island has been an Island for some seventeen thousand years and that Jersey, for instance, has been an island only five thousand years and, while digressing, it is interesting to realise, though how on earth it has been worked our by geologists, that Guernsey was connected to Alderney by a vast plain and when the sea broke through, the Casquets Rocks were the pinnacles of an island a good deal larger than Guernsey is today.  Thus, anyone or anything or any form of civilisation might have been on the top of the little catioroc hill.

However, there was a great number of relics of the old Portes du Catioroc up to the occupation by the Germans.  They scattered things right, left and centre, and threw magnificent big stones into the cement of their bunkers.  The old Gran'mere, (who was always a great favourite of mine and who attracted the attention of Miss Carey who was the most knowledgeable person perhaps of recent times and who gained her knowledge and training from Sir Edgar McCullough, the other great authority) was removed from her position, clearly in order to allow tanks or armoured vehicles of sorts to enter what is now my top front gate.

I found the old lady lying in the grass some way from her original position.  She now stands on the lawn to the west side of the Catioroc building.  The Germans had nothing to do with the destruction of Les Portes du Catioroc - that happened during the creation of the quarry and all during the 19th century, the people of Guernsey treated all ancient remains with utter, and , to me, tragic disregard of history or interest of any sort whatsoever.

There was, some hundred years ago, according to Sir Edgar McCulloch, and Miss carey, some sixty magnificent groups of stones, cromlechs, dolmens, menhirs, temples, representing some twelve areas and places.  Most were destroyed when roads were constructed or houses were built, and they smashed all rocks.  There is the famous story of the house at Bordeaux and La Rocque qui Sonne, but that is nothing to do with us.  There are many such, to me, tragic instances of utter disregard fro tradition or local history.  I am sure we have not improved.  We get waves of zealous middle-aged ladies from the Mainland who wax excited over the little people and the quaintness and everything being too too interesting, but we ourselves have no interest in our geological history.

Before the Germans came in 1940, there was a definite rampart from the lane Chemin le Roi, right around the old Catioroc watch house and in that bank, before I had any time or power and, above all, any money to do anything about it, I would amuse myself, while living here, just digging and out of that bank I had quite an amazing collection of interesting stone age things, troughs, hammers, what we would call pestle and mortars, hewn out of granite.  A great number of things, to such an extent that, I forget what year, but a party of geologists were over here from the British Museum and a local resident, Miss Mary Bishop, who lived in the district in a bungalow built by her father, Gerald Bishop, and who was intensely interested in archaeology, asked me if she might bring the party up here.  I still did not poses the field but it was beautifully kept by grazing cattle and there was plenty of room in which to display my trophies.  The visitors from the British Museum were extremely interested and asked me whether I would let them take the things back to the museum in London.  I was not even sure whether they were in my possession, but I doubted it because, as I said, I did not own the field, but in any case, I felt that they were of Guernsey and in Guernsey and I had had the honour of digging them up and I felt that they should stay in Guernsey.  They are still in |Guernsey and not in visible because probably 95% of these interesting stones and hatchets and hammers and what have you were pitched into the bunkers.  I have a few relics but they did not go to London.

When I came back to find that the Germans had built a tower, I was in two minds about it.  It was extremely ugly.  It had that gash of a mouth they loved so much, no windows and only an iron door.  There did not seem to be anything one could do with it.  They had also scattered the beautiful big stones, including Gran'mere, but I found the old lady.  They had most certainly cut away about 9/10ths of the rampart that went round.  That rampart, of course, was the earthworks of the Norse encampment and I would not have touched it.  I had no need to, because it aws an extremely useful rampart to me, of the building of 1739.  It would not have dawned on me to remove it and I cannot think why the did .  However, after 1946, I found a very different contour round my property.

In 1946, I found the place in almost as bad condition as I had found it in 1918.  This quite clearly had nothing to do with the Nazis.  Its terrible condition was a different condition; not the messes of cows or weeds.  They had apparently kept it beautifully and the shrubs I had here before 1940 were all there, trimmed and cared for, the Germans had had one bunk added to the two-bunk cabin which had one bedroom and they lined the rooms with wood: clearly before it wood became so scarce.  Their extremely ugly tower was quite beautifully wood-lined and I cannot believe that they bothered to take away some very fine pictures, particularly oil paintings of Guernsey ships and other have objects which were my treasures.  Two particular things I regret very much and we all know that after the departure of the Germans, the looting by local people was, sad to say, pretty general.

I did not mind what anyone else stole from my property, but they wrecked the bunks but did not take all the wood away, they stripped partly the wooden wall linings with which the Germans had mad e themselves more comfortable, and they were beginning to move stones from the inside.  They left two cast iron candelabra which looked, I suppose, useless and ugly.  They had been forged for me un Toronto for something I had done there which pleased the Torontonians and I was glad to find them, but there were two oil-paintings of Guernsey sailing ships which I miss to this day.

They were large and would have no interest for Germans to take away.  They must be her somewhere.  One was an interesting, if not very exciting, oil painting of a Guernsey sailing ship passing Corsica and the other was a far larger oil painting which hung over the fireplace in th bigger room, well framed and in beautiful condition, of the Captain Le Lacheur, a beautiful ship fully rigged and flagged overall.  A very lovely treasure for the Island of Guernsey.  I had discovered both of these picturers in a coal shed in the Bordage some time before.  The Captain Le Lacheur ship, I think extremely well painted by someone, had an inscription on the back which told us that Captain Le Lacheur himself had had this spectacular picture of his ship in full sail and flagged all over to present to his wife.

How it got into the coal cellar I do not know, but I feel convinced that it must somewhere in somebody's house in Guernsey today.  I would be very grateful to have it and the other one of the ship passing Corsica returned.  They could be left outside the front door one night and I would find them joyfully in the morning and ask no questions!

Le Catioroc notes #2

Le Catioroc was Government property as a watch house, a stone hut 6'6" square inside and 8' something outside owing to its very thick walls, had two windows, very small, a fireplace which worked superbly up to 1956, one door facing north, in two sections like a stable door, from which a customs official could watch the shipping and, at very close hand, the old road, Le Chemin Le Roi, which as, at that time I believe, the only road to the beach, between the Gele road, Vazon, and the L'Eree hill.  The little watch house was built and is dated , over the door, 1739.  With the Napoleonic scare, a passage and a considerably larger room, with a stone seat encircling its walls was added as quarters for the soldiers of the adjacent batteries.  I have documents bearing their names and duties.

I think the only remaining battery, so much destroyed by the Nazis, is the battery near Le Trepied Dolmen, which members of our respective Society only too frequently call Le Catioroc Dolmen.

According to Edith Carey, who gained so much of their knowledge from Sir Edgar MacCullough, where the Catioroc stands today was the largest collection of prehistoric stones in the Island.  They were known to later generations as Les Portes du Catioroc, and were nearly all destroyed  when the quarry behind Perelle Bakery was opened in order to supply stone for the coast road and the magnificent sea walls.

Outcrops of stone existed very clearly when I first rented Le Catioroc from the Government in 1918, and, to this day, the two rows of stones at Le catioroc, mentioned by Victor Hugo in The Toilers of the Sea, are in their original order.  One row of them was dispersed , but not buried by their Nazis in order to widen the entrance for large armoured vehicles.  Hugo is reputed to have stood in the window of the larger room and, with his usual habit of suiting some of his scenes to what he was looking at, gave Gilliatt a conversation with a bird, thereby proving that he was in league with the devil.  There is also a story of Hugo on other visits, writing some of Les Miserables at Le Catioroc.

many years later, of course, the composer John Ireland was inspired by the old cottage and district to write his well known Sarnian Suite on the hill top.

The rows of stones being back in position, I have also reerected , but on a slightly different site, what Miss Carey and others used to call La Granmere du Catioroc.  She is a much cruder, or rather, she is completely unhewn, than the famous Grand-mere du Cimitiere at St. Martin's.  She had been knocked down, but I found her in the long grass and she now stands in her small stone circle which is filled with limpet shells.

The Germans occupied the cottage and kept it in perfect condition.  They closed the fornt door and made it a booby trap for comandoes.  They opened a door at the back which gave access to the tower they built for observation, saying that it was the longest view of the Channel in the Island.  I have been told that it was in telephone communication direct - a 'hot line' as we say today - with Paris and Hitler's Chancellroty by under ground cable.

The whole hill side was shaven down free of all vegetation so that no one could creep up unseen.  When the war was over, it was not until 1953 that I got permission to put in windows and a door to my house.  Local people had clearly stripped my processions throughout, and also the woodwork with which the German's had carefully lined the tower and cottage for their warmth.

In 1953 I began to alter the tower by changing the big slit window at he top into five little windows and , in the lower section, putting in a window and doorway facing east.  Incidentally, the tower is entirely encased in stones washed up by the sea, carried up hand to hand by slaves, from the slipway on Perelle beach.  I am grateful to one man of the garrison at Le Catioroc who planned this.   He was I gather a Chez architect who is supposed to have said that he could not bear any more concrete puddings such as were being built, and, as they had hundreds of poor slaves to order about, he set them shoulder to shoulder from the beach to Le Catioroc.  There is at least one man in the parish of St. Saviour's who was in that gang, who lives here today, and told me that story.

One need not go into the stories of wretched slaves being dropped down the well .  Nevertheless, the nazis destroyed my well and sealed it over.  They completed the work on the tower in June 12th, 1942.  On the upper level there were two machine guns and a range-finder.  Around the walls, above the panelling, was a very wonderful plan, showing the distances from the tower at all points of the compass visible there from - more than 180°.

If I may digress a little, in 1940, I was in New York City, when I was invited to go to Canada and deputise on an appearance for Mr Douglas Fairbanks Jnr., who was unable to fulfil his promise.  On the train, going to Montreal, I fell in with two young American coastguards/sailors, who were going to try to enlist in the Royal Air Force.  The United States was not yet in the war.  We appear to have exchanged addresses and I completely forgot the episode until the 14th June, 1942, when I was back in London.  On that day, my telephone rang and an American voice reminded me of this journey to Montreal, asked me to go to lunch and said, "I want to tell you about your cottage which I saw yesterday!".

This was a fascinating luncheon, at which he told me that his coastguard mate had failed the colour-blind test and that he himself was in the Eagle Squadron attached to the RAF.  He had a map of Guernsey and had found Le catioroc marked on it.  Every day for weeks they had been flying sorties over St. Nazaire, over the Islands, sometimes very high, sometimes what he called 'on the deck'.  One day he signalled that he was having engine trouble and was going to peel off.  He peeled off, knowing exactly where he was going, but not aware that he would fly through the greatest activity at a height of no more than perhaps 30', over what were becoming the famous guns at Le Frie Baton.  Eye witnesses in the Islands have told me of this incredible feat and how the Germans said that they had never seen such flying.

This young man swooped down from Frie Baton, low over Les Rouvets, up the Chemin du Roi, and went in a mad zig-zag to avoid the guns around perelle bay and from everywhere else.  He got back safely!  At lunch I was amazed, and am still amazed, at the extremely correct description of the Island which he gave me and which he must have gathered in literally seconds, if not very few minutes.  But I was thrown out  when he said to me "But you never told me you had a tower".  I felt great disappointment, because I thought he must have gone to the wrong place, but he insisted no, no, it was the correct place.  It was my place and it had a tower and the tower was new, quite new.  Not believing him, but trying to humour this enthusiastic and rather over-wrought young man, I had a brain wave and thought that he might have picked up Fort Saumarez, the battery of which might look like a cottage from the air at speed, and which already had a tower, a short stubby one.  I asked him on which side of the cottage was the tower.  Land or sea?  And he said "I know what you mean, but your tower is on the sea-side, and is quite new.".

For some three years I was dubious about the whole affair, but considerably shaken by his minute description of the lay of the land from, say, Le Gouffre to Perelle Bay.  Eventually, of course, I found that I did have a tower and it had, indeed, been new, because the date of our luncheon was the 14th June, 1942, and scratched on the tower O found Fertig 12 June, 1942.  That young man was Major Jay Fox of the United States of America, and I have since called that tower the Fox tower.  It bears the fox weather-vane on the flagpole which I added.  And here I would like to point out, once and for all, to any Guernsey people who notice it , or speak about it to me, that it is not, and it never was a Martello.  I consider it the best thing the Germans did in the Islands and it now contains a little guest cabin with all bedroom equipment above and a little library of my best books and many treasures, historical and theatrical below.  [Later became a bathroom, S/J].

For some reason, I was not allowed to repair the cottage until 1953, by which time, it had been stripped of all contents and even the wooden panelling.  Even the stones began to disappear.

In 1955 or 1956, I was in a position to add a little more comfort.  I had always known that I wanted to make it my home on  retiring, and I began to submit plans which I had had in my mind for many years.  First of all, whatever I did, I wanted to do it in granite and in pink granite at that.  On all hands I was slapped down, one big thing being that nobody had built in granite for many years - 50 or 60 - it was unprocurable anywhere.  I found that this was not so, nor was it madly expensive as authorities told me it would be.

With the fantastic goodwill and help from Mr George Le Couteur and his boys, many of whom had been my 'boys' in the Royal Guernsey Light Infantry in the First World War, and with the keen appreciation  of Mr Harold Rabey, and even more enthusiasm from the brilliant architect Mr Merry, we had most pleasurable meetings in which all of theses experienced gentlemen allowed me to expound all my ridiculous ideas.  Everyone of them expressed such relief and interest that I was not wanting to build the same sort of building that was, and is being increasingly churned out in the Island today, all alike and with no imagination, that the whole team, workmen and all bustled about and got down to it in a way which can only be described in the Perelle expression "un p'tit pochet de Souris", which translates as a "pocket-full of mice".

My inexperienced wishes and suggestions were leapt upon and executed immediately.  Mr Merry's plans have been exhibited to the amazement of architects in England and the United States and, in his enthusiasm, he had made them merely from paintings which I had sent to him.  I would simply say "Dear Mr Merry, I want it to look like this".  All this, of course, sounded completely crazy to the Authorities, and, need I say, everything was held up and held back and held off for many months.  I do not remember how long, but eventually work was commenced in September 1956.  [S/J has construction progress photographs].