Broad Street

From Jerripedia

Broad Street

The Le Sueur obelisk in the days when there were boarding houses in Broad Street

Broad Street, formerly La Grande Rue, and also Rue Egypte, was for
a long time St Helier's principal road, leading from the edge of the town at Charing Cross to the Royal Square, or Market Square as it
was previously known

The street in 1875 photographed by Ernest Baudoux

Principal road

Broad Street is a very wide street - hence its eventual name - increasing in breadth from the Charing Cross end to its junction with New Cut, Library Place and Conway Street, although the eastern end was split into two with the erection of a granite obelisk in memory of one of the parish's most successful and best-loved Constables, Pierre Le Sueur, after his death in 1853. Le Sueur had lived in a house overlooking the site of his obelisk, which commentators at the time condemned as 'irredeemably ugly'.

The Le Sueur Obelisk makes the centrepiece of the cobbled street at the turn of the 19th century. Today the trees are much larger and hide the obelisk from our view, an extensive area has been paved and pedestrianised and there is a café behind the obelisk

Limit of town

In its early days the row of houses on the south were the limit of the town in that direction, with a wall behind protecting these properties from the sea. Remnants of that wall still remain but the sea has been progressively forced back by successive land reclamation.

This side of the street now consists largely of financial institutions. On the opposite side there are shops, but many just have a back entrance, with the frontage on what is now the much more fashionable King Street. But roles have reversed, because when Broad Street was La Grande Rue, King Street was a backstreet, literally La Rue de Derrière.

Broad Street was St Helier's first shopping area, although this came fairly late, because until the influx of English immigrants caused a rapid growth in the town early in the 19th century, most of the inhabitants were very poor and did whatever shopping they could afford in the weekly market. Jersey was not a nation of shopkeepers, and has never really been, with many of the retail establishments started by immigrants from France and England.

Property histories

We have two pages of histories of Broad Street premises from the 1830s to the present day. Each follows a route down one side of the street, with odd-numbered properties to the south and even-numbered to the north, starting at the eastern end where Broad Street meets Library Place, a much narrower street leading to the Royal Square.

British Hotel
A history of Broad Street from Jersey Archive's What's Your Street's Story? series

Gallery

Click on any image to see a full-size version

The street in about 1910 when it was cobbled
British Hotel, Broad Street, now Barclay's Bank
Broad Street, leading to Conway Street,with the British Hotel on the left
Broad Street with the Le Sueur Obelisk
Broad Street in 1905
1953
The new General Post Office opened in 1909
A horse-drawn 'taxi' awaits a guest outside the British Hotel in Broad Street
The obelisk in 1883
The western end of the street with the Mitre Hotel in the foreground
Handcarts on cobbled streets on a winter's day
What is now the main St Helier branch of LloydsTSB Bank was C & C Bank in 1917
Broad Street in 1875
The General Post Office

This is where the Post Office now stands

The Le Sueur Monument viewed from Conway Street
Carriages in Broad Street
A procession through Broad Street
Broad Street in the 1950s
An LL Postcard
New Cut, and New Street beyond, viewed from Broad Street
This property was demolished in about 1975

The cobbles were covered in 1928

1900s
1970s
1920s
Broad Street in 1908
Newspapers used to be sold on a Sunday outside Lloyds Bank
1965

This picture was originally dated to 1877-78. The poster in front of the Le Sueur Monument is advertising a Town of St Helier Entente Cordiale Fete in the grounds of Victoria College. It has proved very difficult to read, but '47th Regiment' can be made out, which was taken to mean that the 47th Lancashire Fusiliers were present in the island as the garrison regiment, and they were here between those dates. The poster also mentions the East Surreys, and although they are not known to have been garrisoned in Jersey at this time, it was thought possible that their band, along with that of the Fusiliers, was an attraction at the fete. However, it later became apparent that the 47th regiment was a reference to a visiting French military band and that the picture was much later, taken in the first decade of the 20th century when the East Surreys were the garrison regiment. This fits much better with the concept of entente cordiale which followed a series of agreements between Britain and France in 1904. The East Surreys arrived in Jersey the following year

Capital Counties Bank, founded in 1873, on the corner of Broad Street and Conway Street - now Lloyds Bank
1953
Demolition of 27 Broad Street in 1975
Hambros
A datestone at 31 Broad Street
Cabs wait for business in the early 20th century
Capital and Counties Bank
Germans in 1940
1898
Nos 22-36 on the right
A bus passes through the street

The taxi rank in 1982

A flower stall in front of the monument in the 1970s
Members of the St Helier Municipality in procession along the street photographed by Percival Dunham
No 25 has been demolished in 1978
Au Grand Turc
1918
1978
1978
1978
1948
The former British Hotel building became Standard and Chase Bank, and later Barclays Bank
An architect's drawing in 2002 of the outdoor seating area after the public toilets were converted to a cafe

Broad Street businesses

The British Hotel decorated in 1921

The British Hotel in Broad Street was known as Almond's in 1840
An unusual mixture of businesses for this Blampied family: Coal merchants with an Esplanade depot, and tailors in partnership with Lafolley, in Broad Street
ABC Tearooms
Town Jewellers
Downer auctioneers and estate agents
Au Grand Turc
1892
1892
1891
1852
1890
1886
1852
1888
1905
1852

A double-decker bus passes the Mitre public house in 1932. Traffic in the street was two-way at the time. In 2021 a controversial decision was taken to bar through traffic from the street entirely