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Eighteenth Century Coastal Tower No. 15 |
This watchtower is one of a series of fifteen built in Guernsey in 1778/79. Their purpose was to support batteries at possible landing places.
Their construction was triggered by the French becoming allied with the Americans in their War of independence, following which the Governor of Jersey was convinced that France would seek to invade the Channel Islands. The towers were numbered anti-clockwise from St. Peter Port and this example is thus No. 15.
The Ferguson family lived in the tower in the 1860s and Charles William Ferguson was born in the tower in 1869. In the late 1880s the Mallett family conducted a catering business from the tower.
In 1928 the family started a ferry service from St. Peter Port which continued until 1993 with the exception of the German Occupation 1940-45. Fermain was placed out of bounds to civilians and heavily mined. The tower was manned as a machine gun post. In 1946 Percy Ferguson with his father resumed the ferry service with a rescue craft used at Dunkirk in June 1940 which they named the "Silver Queen."
The tower was bequeathed to the National Trust of Guernsey in 2002 by Percy Ferguson. The plaque has been added at the request of Percy Ferguson to commemorate his parents Alice Ruby Matilda and Cecil B. Ferguson.