Ancient Jersey · 12 places
Green Island (La Motte)
Its real name is La Motte.
- Parish
- St Clement
- Type
- Neolithic site
- Rarity
- Uncommon
- Tide
- Low tide only
Audio guide · a 20-second taste of the story of Green Island (La Motte). The full guide plays in the app — hands-free, offline, at the place.
0:00–:––
That's the preview. The full guide plays in the app — offline, standing right there. Launching 2026 — follow for the day
The story
Its real name is La Motte. Until the seventeenth century it was a promontory joined to the shore by a thin strip of land; a storm took the strip away, and the sea is eroding it still. In 1911 slab-walled, capstoned cists were exposed here, and the Société Jersiaise excavated the site from 1911 to 1914, finding eighteen of them along with a large cairn of diorite boulders. The finds span such a long period that the site is hard to date: long thought prehistoric, the graves were reassessed in 2002 by Mark Patton as medieval. Some of the cists have been rebuilt at La Hougue Bie. The tide closes the beach behind the island twice a day.
Plan your visit
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Only reachable at low water. The sea comes in fast and from behind — check the tide before you set out, allow a wide margin, and never try to beat a rising tide. Live tide times (gov.je) ↗Tidal guide
