BARRY JONES

Retirement

September 1965 - Maurice Colbourne dies - BJ sells 48, and moves to Guernsey.

BJ lived in retirement at Le Catioroc, La Perelle, Guernsey, CI, with his golden retriever "Honey".  Le Catioroc an old coast guard cottage on the highest point at La Perelle, was bought by BJ with money lent to him by his elder Sister, Lady Mabel Minnie Monteath (nee. Jones).

During the Second World War, the Germans commandeered the cottage, and with the help of Jewish and Polish slave labour, removed the old stone jetty at La Perelle and built the only stone tower in Guernsey on to the side of the cottage.  The grounds have many old German fortifications, including the main island switchboard to Germany.  The old well is covered over, the Germans used it to dispose of slave labour.

Article form The Morning Telegraph, NY, Sunday 29 May 1921, Clare Ogden;

His proudest possession is a cottage he bought in his native isle after the war.  "Le Catioroc" is 250 years old and stands on the site of a Viking stronghold on Perelle Bay.  Druid ruins surround it and the villagers nearby insist it is haunted.  Victor Hugo's hero in The Toilers of The Sea livid in the cottage and was heard to speak to the ghosts on Friday nights.  When there is a full moon, the devil shape of a dog comes to dance in the moonlight with the witches.

The walls of "Le Catioroc" are three-and-a-half feet thick.  Mr Jones had nothing to do to the place when he bought it, except clean it.  For many years cattle had used it for a shelter and the witch stories had kept the villagers from approaching it.  He has it fitted up as a typical fisherman's cottage and lives there when he can get home.  The natives are not sure he isn't in league with the devil himself for kining such a place.

Guernsey must be a great place to live.  There are no taxes, no import duties, no crime on the island.  There is a jail, never used for any one but the an occasional drunken roisterer.  The 40,000 people  live on peace and contentment.  the island is free; its government an ideal home rule.

"It is much what the Irish people wanted", BJ said, "maybe the reason we make a success of it is because we have had 800 years to grow used to it.  Even the English people like us. They can get English tobacco and cigarettes in Guernsey at half what they pay for them in London and even the Scotch can buy their own whisky on our island for half what it costs them at home.  We have no duties.  When we need some public improvement the people get together and tax themselves for that one thing.  In 1921 George and Mary of England came over to visit us and there was a great ceremony when the islanders pledged fealty to them as the Duke and Duchess of Normandy.  But we owe England nothing and they can demand nothing of us".'

Le Catioroc, was reclaimed by BJ after the War, and slowly extensions were built (as film and stage money allowed), until the house looked a romantic cobbling together of bits and pieces.  Equally, inside the house was full of art treasures, some being his own work, and all sorts of acting ephemera (most major pieces, including GBS letters, at the British Theatre Museum in Covent Garden).  The house was the most superb example of a very creative and well planned bachelor home.  [See separate section on Le Catioroc].

It is claimed that Victor Hugo once lived in the original cottage whilst writing The Toilers of the Sea.

BJ died, 1st May 1981, Westcroft Nursing Home, Guernsey. Aged 89