History of the Church in St Brelade

The origins of this church can be traced back to the 5th/6th century and wandering Celtic saints. These extraordinary men travelled far and wide, seeking out places of solitude and peace in which to worship God, and teaching their form of Christianity to their fellow Celts of Ireland, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany.

Christianity had, by then, become the accepted religion of the diminishing Roman Empire, and the Celtic monks embraced this new religion with a passion for sacrifice and self-denial, and a driving concern for the souls of their fellow men.

Such a man was St. Brelade or Branwalladur - described by the Exeter martyrology as a son of a Cornish king, Kenen.

The site, a rocky ledge overlooking a sheltered bay, is the kind of place a Celtic missionary would have chosen.

The core of St Brelade's Church  embodies the earliest Norman architectural remains in the island. For more than 400 years churches in the Channel Islands were governed from France, and the church was enlarged for the increase in the population in the island.

In the 16th Century however, the Pope placed Jersey within the Diocese of Winchester, and the reformation brought many French Calvinist protestants to the island, and the church interior became more austere. Reverting to Anglicanism 80 years later, little was altered.

During the 1700's, to cope with a growing population, the church was altered to include several galleries, including a "Galerie des Fumeurs" for those who wished to smoke during the sermon.

Not until the turn of the 20th century, during the stewardship of Rev J A Balleine, was the church again remodelled into what you see today.