Jersey Parishes, Iconography and Island Senses of Place

Abstract

The Channel Islands are an unusual archipelago. While they are dependencies of the British Crown, they are not part of the United Kingdom and the main islands – Jersey and Guernsey – enjoy a considerable amount of autonomy, as do Guernsey’s subsidiary territories, Sark and Alderney. Jersey’s internal organisation, through a patchwork of administrative territories known as parishes, is unusual for its longevity and does not accord with modern expectations of hierarchical space. It has been argued that for territories to be perceived as places, they need to be maintained and signalled. Iconography is one such form of signalling. Parish iconography in Jersey is addressed predominantly to insiders, encouraging involvement in parish and community. Travelling through the island, iconography, and particularly its manifestation in signage, informs residents as to which parish they are at any time. The varying adoption of iconography reflects parish individualism but has been diffused: once adopted in one parish, it tends to be adopted in others. There are also locations that can – particularly in the context of Jersey - be described as not-quite places, locales whose identities are (at best) emergent. These lack their own iconography and fit poorly into Jersey’s geography of parishes. The efforts put into parish iconography exemplify Jersey islanders’ efforts to establish and maintain identity by cultural assertion and resistance to homogenisation/modernisation. Not just a record of the past, but maintained and renewed, if anything, parish iconography has increased, as Jersey’s parish system has been perceived as threatened.