In the late nineteenth century, the St. Brelade’s Bay Hotel was hardly more than a pub owned by a local brewery. It was situated where the Cocktail Bar is now. Apart from the parish church, the only houses in the bay at that time were four farms, some fishermen’s cottages and the Martello Tower.
Sarah Jennings, a publican by trade, became the license holder in 1877. Her daughter, Ellen, took over the tenancy in 1880 and in 1884 married Alan Harden an “ambitious commercial traveller”. Over the following years they had three daughters, Helen, May and Eve. Alan Harden was aggressively successful; he considerably enlarged the premises, doubling the bedroom capacity. The room rate at that time was seven shillings and sixpence for full board, with free use of a bathing machine; a lobster lunch was one shilling and sixpence.
In 1917, Mr. Harden asked the brewery to sell him the freehold, they refused. He immediately bought a plot of land right next door and built the granite building at the west end of the hotel and threatened to open a rival establishment! In 1919, the brewery reluctantly sold the freehold to him and the next door property was turned into self-contained flats.
Alan Harden died in 1924 and the license was inherited by Helen Colley, his widowed oldest daughter. During her time in charge, the two buildings were joined together and considerable improvements were made to the interior including, amongst other things. “Electric light throughout”. Then, and earlier, a large proportion of the vegetables used in the Hotel were grown in what are now the gardens. Three “cotils” of Jersey Royals on the hillside at the back, tomatoes and cucumbers in the greenhouse, vegetables where the pool bar and tennis court are now, cherry and pear trees where the swimming pool is situated and an apple orchard on the car park. The only formal garden was where the children’s pool is now.
Helen Colley retired in 1933 and her only son Bob took over the reins; the Germans invaded Jersey on July the 1st 1940 and he escaped to England on one of the last steamers. His mother and his aunts remained on the island throughout the occupation. The Hotel was taken over by our unwelcome visitors and was used as a “Soldatenheim” a place for rest and recreation away from the front line. Jersey was a prestigious part of Hitler’s “Atlantic Wall” and amongst the numerous defensive/aggressive constructions built by slave labour on the island were the sea wall stretching the length of the bay and beneath the terrace at the front of the Hotel an air-raid shelter, now used as a holding tank for rainwater that falls upon the Hotel.
In May 1945, Bob Colley returned to Jersey, with his new wife, Audrey, and his stepson. The Hotel was in an appalling condition after the four years of the Occupation and it took some years to be up and running properly again. Tourism in Jersey started to boom in the late nineteen fifties and during this period the other hotels in the bay were built. Bob Colley made some massive changes to the premises, all the bedrooms were made en-suite, the swimming pool was built along with the pool bar and grill and a new floor was constructed on top of the building. During this period, they had their own offspring, Elizabeth, Robert and Richard.
Bob Colley died in 1965 and for the next twenty-five years the Hotel was run by his stepson Digby, who returned his shares to the family in 1990.
Since then, Robert and Mandy Colley have been responsible for running the Hotel, the fifth generation to do so.
