Historic glasshouses of Candie Gardens

Candie Gardens were laid out as the grounds of Candie House, a St Peter Port residence that now houses the Priaulx Library. The park opened to the public in 1894; its Lower Gardens are regarded as a rare surviving Victorian public flower garden and were restored in 1998-99. The two glasshouses standing there are far older than the park. Wikipedia and Guernsey's museums service date them to 1792 and 1793, and their construction is widely attributed to Peter Mourant, who owned Candie in the late 18th century. A statement of significance quoted by the local press in 2023 goes further: the Duke of Richmond's 1787 map of Guernsey already shows two structures in the position and configuration of the present glasshouses, which suggests they may predate 1792. Other reports give 1780 or the late 1780s, so the precise date remains open.

Guernsey levied no window or glass tax, which encouraged glasshouses to spread across the island, and Candie keeps the oldest known survivors. Both are protected monuments owned by the States of Guernsey. Rotten timbers forced the lower house to close to the public in 2018 and the upper one in 2019. At the end of October 2022 part of the lower house's roof gave way, two beams collapsing and many panes breaking; by April 2024 four of the ten struts on its western slope had fallen or were close to it. Tenders in 2022 and 2023 drew no usable bids, and a more detailed brief followed in 2024. The upper glasshouse was finally restored by the contractors Viage and Rihoy & Son in just over nine months, work announced as complete on 3 March 2026; the lower house still has no funded restoration plan.

According to the heritage assessment summarised by the local press in 2023, both houses follow the pinery-vinery pattern, a lean-to hothouse described by Thomas Hitt in 1757 and devised for growing pineapples, which need warmth and light all year round. That heated purpose is why the island's tourist board calls them the oldest known heated glasshouses in the British Isles. The frames are timber: rafters and wall plates carry the panes, with opening lights worked by mechanisms and metal ladder pins for the gardeners' ladders. The same assessment identified two design details behind the decay: the ladder pins nailed into the rafters, whose expansion and contraction split the wood, and the junction between roof and wall plate, which fails to carry rainwater into the gutter. Successive repairs have altered the timber sections, the opening mechanisms and the style of glazing, to the point that little or no original timber is thought to survive.

The restoration of the upper house, completed in 2026, favoured repair over replacement: the structure was carefully taken down so that as much old material as possible could be kept, new timber and glass were made to the original designs, and the final decoration follows the historic finishes. OpenStreetMap places the two buildings, about 115 metres apart, in the northern part of the Lower Gardens.

Candie Gardens is first of all an open-air garden: the bedding of the Victorian flower garden, lawns, fish ponds and what the museums service and the tourist board describe as a wide variety of plants from around the world, without naming species. In recent years the Floral Guernsey association has replanted the seasonal bedding. The glasshouses themselves, built to force fruit and exotic plants in the island tradition, where the mild Gulf Stream climate let growers deliver fruit earlier and later than their British competitors, hold no collection while the works last. Before the closures, the museums service presented one of the restored houses as the setting of the annual Nerine Festival each October. What the restored upper house will be used for has not yet been announced.

The glasshouses stand in the Lower Gardens, five minutes on foot from the centre of St Peter Port along Candie Road. They are best taken in on a walk that also includes the Guernsey Museum, opened in 1978, the café in the former bandstand, the Priaulx Library in the old Candie House and, in the Upper Gardens, the statues of Queen Victoria (1900) and of Victor Hugo, given by France in 1914 in memory of the writer's exile on the island. The terraces look over the harbour and the islands of Herm, Sark and Jethou, and some paths are steep. Until a reopening is announced the glasshouses can only be seen from outside; half an hour covers the gardens, longer with the museum. October, the month of the Nerine Festival, is the time to aim for if the restored house hosts the event again.