Local History

Alderney from Old Photogaphs tells the history of Alderney in photographs collected by historian Brian Bonnard. Dating from the 1850s to the present day, the pictures are a vivid view of life in Alderney in former times.

St Anne's church bells

Brian started collecting documents and pictures about Alderney's history after discovering very little published material about the island's past.

"The people of Alderney - people who were born here and were here before the war - had collected old pictures and postcards... and they very kindly loaned them to me," explained Brian.

The original version of the book sold out within a couple of years. The publishers then decided a second book was in order and Brian set about creating Alderney from Old Photographs.

The HMS Viper ran aground in 1901

Unique moments in Alderney's history, both in times of war and peace, have been captured in this book. One fascinating picture shows the bells of St Anne's church which were sent to France by the Germans during the Occupation.

"The Germans took them down from the parish church... some were taken to Cherbourg and others, when the island was freed in 1944, were still standing on the Quay waiting to be shipped out of the Island for scrap presumably," recalled Brian.

Eventually the bells were retrieved, restored and hung back in the parish church.

The book also traces the history of transportation on Alderney and shows the transition from sailing ships to war ships. It contains images of shipwrecks including the HMS Viper which ran onto the Renonquet reef near Alderney in 1901, and images of notable events including the paddle-steamer Queen Victoria came across on.

Georgi Kondakov (left) in 1970

The Island of Dread in the Channel

Brian's other recent publication tells the story of a Russian man, named Georgi Ivanovitch Kondakov, who was sent to Alderney during the German Occupation in the Second World War.

Along with 1000 other young Russians he was tasked to build part of Hitler's Atlantic Wall defences on the island.

Survivors from the Alderney camps, 1983

Many of them died from lack of medical treatment, and mistreatment, but Georgi survived and wrote to a Russian newspaper about his experiences. A young Russian journalist picked up the story and eventually Georgi wrote to the States of Alderney hoping to correspond with someone on the island.

"They passed the letter to me [and] we went on to produce a series of letters over three to four years," explained Brian. "I thought by the end of that time it would make an interesting book, which was quite different from any of the other war stuff that had been written about Alderney."

Years later, on the strength of his correspondence with Brian, Georgi was invited back to Alderney as an official guest of the States.

Georgi described Alderney as: "The island of dread in the channel, something they were all frightened to death of."