Qualla: Bréhon Tower

Bréhon Tower: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Halfway between St Peter Port and the island of Herm, an oval lump of granite rises straight out of the sea. There is no causeway, no jetty visible from a distance, just a stubby tower planted on a rock barely larger than itself. The Bréhon Tower looks like a stone milk bottle stoppering the Little Russell channel. It has been guarding that channel since 1857, the last and strangest descendant of the Martello tower, and the story of what happened to it - and from it - is not what its sleepy silhouette suggests.

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Bréhon Tower: Granite Hauled From Herm

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Man vyi, Public domain. The British became nervous in 1850. France was fortifying Cherbourg, just thirty miles south, and the Channel Islands were uncomfortably exposed. The answer was a string of new towers and forts, of which Bréhon was the most exotic - oval rather than round, with three levels stack...

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Image: Man vyi | Public domain

Bréhon Tower: Guns That Broke Themselves

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Public domain. The original plan called for fourteen cannon ports and eight heavy guns. Reality intervened. By the time it was armed, Bréhon mounted three 68-pounders and two ten-inch shell guns, all crowded onto the platform at the top. Each gun weighed five tons. In 1859, while a barge was lo...

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Image: Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Public domain

Bréhon Tower: Five Years Under German Guns

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter__Brown, CC BY-SA 2.0. Bréhon's most violent chapter came not under British command but under German. During the occupation of the Channel Islands from 1940 to 1945, Wehrmacht engineers installed coastal defense and anti-aircraft batteries on the platform. The tower that had been built to defend Guerns...

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Image: Peter__Brown | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bréhon Tower: Birds and Boats

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Man vyi, Public domain. Today Bréhon is something gentler. The tower itself is closed, but the rock around it is open to visitors who arrive by boat - the only way to get there. A navigation light operated by the Guernsey Harbour Authority sits where the guns once stood. In summer, common terns nest on ...

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Image: User:Man vyi | Public domain