The Vale Church

In January 1949 an Early Christian monument was unearthed outside the West door of the church. This stone dates from the 7th or 8th century. It is now situated outside the Baptistry, resting against the wall. This stone points to the presence of a Christian community on this site, somewhere about A.D.600. It is possible that there was a Christian community in the Vale at an even earlier date. A chapel, dedicated to St Magloire, stood in the Vale. St Magloire was a nephew of St Samson of Dol, and was born about the year 535. The chapel in his name was mentioned in a bull of Pope Adrian IV as being in the patronage of Mont Saint-Michel, in Normandy; all traces of the chapel have gone. While the chapel would probably be of a much later date, St Magloire, the British missionary, may well have set up a centre of Christian worship before A.D. 600.

Somewhere around A.D. 968, monks, from the Benedictine monastery of Mont Saint-Michel, came to Guernsey to establish a community in the North of the Island. It is likely that at one time a land bridge connected the two sections next to the Vale church, before the sea broke through. In 1204 it is reported that the Royal Court of Guernsey visited the Braye du Valle to replace boundary markers that had been washed away. This area of Guernsey would form a separate island at high tide, and continued to do so until 1806. The Priory of Mont Saint-Michel was a dependency of the famous Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel. The last remaining stonework is a piece of buttressed wall to the South of the church, by the roadside.

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