Bath Street

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Bath Street


BathStreet1960.jpg

Bath Street at its junction with Beresford Street and Peter Street in 1960 Picture Evening Post


Bath Street is one of the longest streets in St Helier, running from its junction with Queen Street to Beresford Street, Minden Place and along to the junction with Stopford Road, where it continues as David Place

The junction with Belmont Road, 1960

Bath Street was formerly two streets, La Rue de Bas at the lower end and Les Ruettes at the upper end. It was given its present-day name because public baths were once located in the street.

Today it is an important shopping street at the Queen Street end. The former Odeon Cinema, a protected building, stands towards the David Place end, and opposite this building is a public park, created as a rather belated celebration of the Millennium. Another cinema, West's, stood at the junction of Bath Street with Peter Street until it was demolished in the late 20th century. Today an open public square forms part of the site, with shops and offices on two sides.

Philippe Ingouville

To the east of Bath Street between the junctions with Beresford Street and Belmont Road is a largely residential area. This was first developed privately, according to the former librarian of Jersey's Public Library, A S H Dickinson, by a Philippe Ingouville late in the 18th century.

He named Ingouville Place and Ingouville Lane after himself, and Ann Street, which was the eastern boundary of his development, after his wife Ann Martin. Philipps Street at the south was named after his first son who was baptised Philippe. [1] His second son William died in his infancy. Charles Street, which runs from Ann Street to Bath Street was named after his third son Charles. Peter Street, at the southern end, is also believed to have been named after a family member, as perhaps were nearby Wesley Street and Hilary Street.

Some of the original properties stood for nearly 200 years and became notorious slums. They were eventually demolished in the 1960s and 1970s to make way for modern blocks of housing.

To Canada

It is not known exactly when the area was developed because Philippe Ingouville emigrated to Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada, in the late 1700s. He must have returned to Jersey, possibly to continue to oversee the progress of his development, because he wrote to his mother Marie and wife Ann in Cape Breton in 1789, only two years after his daughter Anne was born in Jersey.

Philippe was the great-uncle of Victoria Cross recipient George Henry Ingouville, whose brother John is said to have been the last representative of the family to live in Jersey before emigrating to South America in 1857.

Alternative view

However, there is an alternative view that the property developer was a George Ingouville, probably Philippe's brother. According to a Jersey Evening Post article on 6 July 2006, George lived at La Fregonniere, which became the Imperial Hotel, a Jesuit seminary and is now the Hotel de France.

Jersey Evening Post

The offices of the Jersey Evening Post, Jersey's main newspaper in the 20th century, were located for many years on the corner of Charles Street and Bath Street, with the printing presses in buildings further back in Charles Street. The newspaper relocated to St Saviour in 1977 but for many years it was the focal point for the community on important occasions such as elections and the annual football match between Jersey and Guernsey for the Muratti Vase. Large crowds would gather in the street to await the results of important elections or to listen to a broadcast commentary of a football match in Guernsey.

History

A history of Bath Street, from the Jersey Archive

Histories of individual properties

Initially this section will cover properties in the street which are listed in the Jersey Heritage Historic Environment Record (HER). This record concentrates on properties of historic interest which have not been demolished or substantially rebuilt. Once this stage of the project is complete we will extend it to cover the history of other properties in the street before they were redeveloped.

As shown in the history linked above, most Bath Street properties have been renumbered more than once, causing considerable confusion as to what they were known as in various records. The numbers used below are what the properties are known as in the 21st century, and have been since the 1920s. In the individual histories we attempt to identify numbers they have previously been known by

No 3 No 4 No 6 No 8 No 9 No 10 No 12 Nos 19-21 No 33 No 36
No 40 No 42 No 43 No 45 Nos 48-64 No 49 No 51 Nos 66-70 No 72 No 74
No 75 No 77 No 79 No 82 No 86 Nos 90-92


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Planning officers' pictures

The first batch of pictures were taken by planning officers in 1967 as part of a project to record all the town centre's streets

Click on any image to see full-size version

The Evening Post offices on the corner with Charles Street in 1965
W16BathStreet.jpg
Le Monnier wine merchants' headquarters
A group of musicians performing in Bath Street - date unknown

Bath Street businesses

Arthur Angel's Italian Warehouse

Arthur Angel, born in England in 1824, came to Jersey with his brothers Samuel and Benjamin. Samuel, who was two years younger than Arthur, set up in business at 3 Olympic Place, Bath Street, as a master dyer, and in 1851 he was employing Arthur and two other staff. By 1855 Arthur had gone into business on his own at 9 Bath Street, where he established his Italian Warehouse, which he advertised extensively in the new newspaper Jersey Independent. He offered such delicacies as Dundee Marmalade and 'superior pickles as supplied to Her Majesty (presumably not by Arthur himself). Sadly the business was not a success, because by 1857 it had been taken over by James Wilcox.

Arthur had come to Jersey from Saint Pancras, London, where he was born, via Guernsey, where he supposedly married Matilda Jones in 1845. The couple are said to have had two daughters, Emily and Elizabeth, born in Guernsey in 1846 and 1848. However, the 1851 census shows Arthur living in Jersey with Samuel and described as 'unmarried'. A year later he apparently married again, in Guernsey, to Matilda Davey, and they had four children, including another Arthur (1856-1921).

The family history in online records becomes very confused. Arthur, described as a printer, Matilda, and three of the six children are shown living in Guernsey in the 1861 census, with Arthur's brother Benjamin. There is no sign of Arthur jnr, who is believed eventually to have emigrated to Australia. His father is believed to have returned to England, then gone to the USA, where in 1874 he was said to be serving in the US Navy.

This all seems highly unlikely and the suspicion is that compilers of online trees have located more than one Arthur Angel in various records and assumed that they were all the same person. Wherever he and his family ended up, it is clear that Arthur Angel only traded in Bath Street, St Helier, for a comparatively short time, and failed to make a success of his pickles and marmalade.

Notes and references

  1. There is a dispute over the correct spelling of the street. Today it is known as Philipps Street, but the 1834 Le Gros map of St Helier shows it as Philip Street, all the other streets being named after Anglicised versions of the family forenames without a final possessive 's'
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