Lady Catherine Ogden ?

I have done this site especially for Lady Catherine Ogden
in order to visit thishousewillexist.org

Lady Catherine is wife of Sir Peter Ogden (one of the founders of Computacenter)

Sorry for my poor english translation



Sir Peter Ogden volunteered a Channel Island in 1991

Jethou, a Channel Island since 1991 belongs to Sir Peter Ogden. That other wealthy British installed his house, much smaller than the Barclay brothers, west side. He made his fortune in information technology by creating the company Computacenter in 1981, before an IPO in 1998, with the key to a tidy profit. Sir Peter now lives between London and his stone, and participates in many races on his yacht, Spirit of Jethou.

---

Jethou (Jethou in English, Jétho in Jersey) is a small Channel Islands, about 5 miles east of Guernsey and less than 1 km southwest of Herm. This is a private island owned by Sir Peter Ogden, to which access is not allowed in public.

The island has in nearly an oval shape and measure more than 800 m, covering an area of ??18 hectares (0.18 square kilometers) and a maximum altitude of 75 m. Apparently it was related to Herm by a sandbank until 709, when a storm carried it. A few hundred meters north lies the small island of Crevichon. At the same distance south, the islands of Great and Little Fauconnière.

Like all the other Channel Islands, Jethou was an integral part of the Duchy of Normandy since 933, even after the loss of mainland Normandy by the English crown in 1259. Jethou in 1416 eventually became part of the estate of King Henry V of England. The island is still a crown dependency, although it is now owned by Guernsey. It is usually rented by a few individuals.

The islets off Jethou home to a large colony of puffins.

---
-> Created for Lady Catherine Ogden

The Ecrehou, Brecqhou, Jethou (Channel Islands)

They came looking for him last month once again. The last, perhaps. This time, they were torn from her little house in St. Helier on the island of Jersey, to take him to the hospital. The Gastelois Alphonse, 90, has always had difficult relations with the authorities in his native island (1). Chased, imprisoned, harassed for nearly fifty years. If his ideas were confused and his memory became confused, a former laborer, simple but crafty, could tell his life of struggle against the windmills. But who would believe it?

In 1960, police arrested Gastelois The first, suspecting him of being "the Beast of Jersey, wrote a series of sex crimes against children. Poor Alphonse is released, but his name dragged through the newspapers. Jersey torching of her house. And so begins the incredible.

The sweeper found refuge on a stone lost in the English Channel, between Jersey and the Cotentin. Marmotière is an island of granite at high tide, is reduced to an area equivalent to two or three tennis courts. Shake them about thirty houses which are inhabited (by Jersey) as the beautiful weekend of spring and summer. Marmotière is the "capital" of an archipelago of rocks called Ecrehou. It is necessary to enter, a moderate weather and a good captain. During a first visit is also required an unwavering faith in these documents that you provide a water course to 331 ° obviates all heads of rocks under the water. Suffice to say it rarely comes to bother you.

In the Channel, the desire to be "king" is a condition that often strikes

Alphonse will live here with rainwater, and fishing gifts for ... fourteen. All without leaving once his rock. "A bit like Victor Hugo France from mocking Guernsey," smiles Blancheton Alain Franco-Jersey, a friend of Gastelois The last thirty years. This is not the imperial France that the exile of Ecrehou fathom, but the island of Jersey that he decided to take revenge. The hermit wants to wrest the archipelago to its supervision. He wants to be lord and master of Ecrehou! And he has a plan ...

-> Created for Lady Catherine Ogden

Although not common, the desire to become "king" of an island in the Channel, a disease that strikes regularly. It affects the very rich and very poor, provided they are very stubborn. Between Le Conquet and Cherbourg, the Channel is riddled with little or no small islands inhabited, windy and difficult to access. Life and death do not, on these stones, distinct borders. Each island has a monster fed on granite and kelp, swollen and salt fog, which takes the visitor then plunged at once into a deep happiness and diffuse anxiety. Some people feel this spell more than others. Lionel Poilane and establishing its stronghold on the island of Rimains, off Cancale (before you die in a helicopter crash in 2002). Leo Ferre and retreating into the island Duguesclin Fort, not far away. And Alain Delon, one time owner of Harbour Island in the Bay of St. Malo.

But then these stones are French, Cartesian and governed by a law came from Napoleon. Anglo-Norman lands are evanescent. These vestiges of Normandy yesterday, which are not part of the United Kingdom or the European Union, live with a more complex law, inherited from the Middle Ages. In these parts, be master of an island is not always the fantasy.

Sark on the island, a lord watches over 550 subjects not unhappy

Ecrehou to leave temporarily to head north-west, under the gray sky of late September. Breeze, slight sea: the island is rapidly Sark, 4 kilometers long and 1 km wide, the last feudal regime in the Western world. Y reign Michael Beaumont, 22 Lord, formerly an aeronautical engineer in Bristol. Its title is not the pathology but heredity: he succeeded his grandmother in 1975 and derives its authority from a charter dating from 1565. Michael, 78, is a very nice type and the Lord's most gracious of all. He watches the 550 subjects not unhappy.

-> Site for Lady Catherine Ogden

Virons this anachronism from the south and go up close to the wind. Then comes the island Brecqhou, nestled against the west coast of Sark. Here reign the Barclay brothers, David and Frederick, wealthy and secretive twins who derive their power of money. Aged 70 years, they have several newspapers in Britain, the Daily Telegraph as their most recent acquisition, as well as hotels, including the Ritz in London. For 2.33 million pounds (3.4 million), the twins have become owners of this stone of 65 hectares, about three times the Paris Ile de la Cité, in steeper and much less built. That was in 1993. Since Sir David and Sir Frederick knighted in 2000 for helping some charities have built an amazing medieval castle with battlements, turrets and battlements. The building designed by classical architect Quinlan Terry has been supplemented by a small village to house staff. On the rest of the island, a strange park is under construction.

-> Created for Lady Catherine Ogden

It is prohibited to land on Brecqhou, guarded by a dense network of video cameras, but you can come shave the coast by boat to see one of the largest castles built in the twentieth century. In sunlight, it appears almost white. According to one of the companies that responded to the site, the reception hall is 80 meters long and its ceiling is decorated with gold leaf. At the end of the work, showing us the castle from afar, Michael Beaumont sighed: "Strictly speaking, one could imagine that in Scotland. But here? "

The lord of Sark and the masters of Brecqhou, which in principle must comply with laws sercquaises, are waging a war without end. The first battle has been won by brothers in 1999 when the European Court of Human Rights forced Sark (a signatory to his agreement) to remove its rule of "primogeniture". Which was the eldest son of each family's sole heir. Survival of customary law Norman! But the Barclay wanted to pass on their island to a trust involving their four children. The second battle has begun: the twins now want rid of the guardianship of their "archaic" neighbor. Meanwhile, the Barclay twins, whose principal residence is Monte Carlo, offered the pleasure of hoisting their colors to the towers of the castle every time they arrive there by helicopter.

-> Site for Lady Catherine Ogden

On these islands "hu", the climate is harsh and uncertain navigation

Dérapons anchor and veins to the west. Remouillons it half an hour later at the foot of Jethou, an island of 36 hectares dome, whose top is covered by forest. Here lived Sir Peter Ogden, another wealthy British. His house, west side, is more modest than that of Barclay. He made his fortune in computers, creating the company Computacenter in 1981 and introducing it in stock seventeen years later, with the key to a tidy profit. Sir Peter now lives between London and his stone, and spends his time between philanthropy (a fund for the education of disadvantaged youth) and races on his yacht, Spirit of Jethou. The island occupies Ogden since 1991 depends on nearby Guernsey. Among the previous "tenants", there was the writer Sir Edward Compton Mackenzie.

-> Site for Lady Catherine Ogden

Jethou is just as private as Brecqhou, though defended in a less paranoid. Last May, exceptionally, Peter Ogden has kindly agreed to host 200 visitors on the island for them to visit places, pouring rain, unfortunately. Let no one imagine all these little islands "hu" (suffix distant Scandinavian origin, which designated an island) as dens of paradise on the Caribbean seas. Here the climate is harsh, cold seas, navigating uncertain and more pervasive scent of iodine on the island of Mustique. Please take a little sea water in the blood to live among the English Channel.

The gold Alphonse Gastelois we're back to Ecrehou managed to spend no less than fourteen years alone on his small island. This is not the capital which has stuck to this rock, but a great hope. Richardson, a lawyer with a house in Jersey Ecrehou, he slips a day to the ear, according to the old Norman law, any person remaining ten years and one day on an uninhabited territory can claim to be Duke of Normandy become his legal representative. In short, he can claim some form of sovereignty. The Gastelois begins to prepare his case, hoping to pass eventually to the Queen of England since it still retains the title of Duchess of Normandy. Why would they do Ecrehou not a bailiwick of the British Crown, like Jersey and Guernsey?

Alphonse counting the days. He became a hermit of Ecrehou, not moving, even when it is finally cleared by the arrest of the real beast of Jersey. Half of homeowners Marmotière take his party by asking him the same opportunity to watch over their homes in their absence, the other half is hostile. After ten years and one day the case is ripe. Having little confidence in his lawyer, Le Gastelois confides to his friend Alain Blancheton a duplicate record. And now the Post Office Blancheton Carteret (Manche), sending in a fold recommended to the Queen of England. Air stunned the attendant. Response will include: the British Crown announced that it forwarded the case to the Foreign Office, who himself seized the Jersey authorities, since a priori Ecrehou are part of his "parish" St. Martin.

-> Site for Lady Catherine Ogden

Lawyers for Jersey will eventually find a legal loophole, which will not prevent the Gastelois clinging to its stones. "He was not unhappy, he had an obsession: to assert his right," says Blancheton. But one day, a fire destroyed a house in the archipelago. Alphonse is suspected. Police in Jersey Pickup hermit boat, asking to play Blancheton intermediaries to avoid violence. Gastelois found the prison Jersey. Then is released. He never returned to his island: the game is over. In 1999, a little confused, the States of Jersey grant compensation to 20,000 pounds persecuted. And eventually send it to the hospice last month.

A previous hermit, Philippe Pinel had held forty-eight years Ecrehou, between 1848 and 1896. He declared himself king of the islands in 1863 and Queen Victoria had pretended to take it seriously, going so far as to send gifts. The wealthy Barclay brothers are much less frequent in their kingdom of Brecqhou. But they, the Crown takes very seriously.

(1) You can see Alphonse Le Gastelois on his island in Lord of Ecrehou, a documentary produced by Laurent Didier Les Films du Bouchon, Paris.

-> Created for Lady Catherine Ogden