Platte Rocque Tower

The story

Sometimes called Grouville No. 0, this tower was built in 1782 to replace the guardhouse captured by the French invasion force on the evening of 5 January 1781, the night before the Battle of Jersey - the French landed on the rocks just here and marched on St Helier, where they were defeated the next morning. Commissioned in the wake of the battle, it is the closest tower to the landing place. By 1840 it had a garrison of a sergeant and twelve men, a carronade on the roof and a magazine for twenty barrels of powder. During the Occupation the Germans added concrete works and an anti-aircraft machine gun on the roof. In June 1944 a sentry fired at a passing Allied aircraft; the plane turned and dropped its bombs, which missed the tower and fell in the road, damaging nearby houses. The tower is privately owned today.