Sausmarez Manor

49°26′08″N 02°32′50″W / 49.43556°N 2.54722°W / 49.43556; -2.54722

Sausmarez Manor is a historic house in Saint Martin, Guernsey.

The first mention of the Sausmarez family in Guernsey is at the consecration of the Vale church in 1117 attended by Guillaume de Sausmarez, followed by a letter dated 1254 in which Prince Edward, Lord of the Isles, afterwards King Edward I, ordered an enquiry into the rights of the Abbot and Monks of Mont-Saint-Michel to "wreck" in the Islands of Guernsey and Jersey. The enquiry was duly held before "Dominus Henry le Canelu, Dominus Gulielmus De Saumareis, milites".^{[citation needed]} The William de Saumareis is almost certainly the same person as William de Salinells who was Seigneur de Samarès, then called Saumareys, in the parish of Saint Clement in Jersey, who was born towards the end of the reign of Richard Coeur de Lion. It is not known when he acquired his new fief in St Martin's parish in Guernsey, but its manor-house was on much the same site as the present one.

In 1313 an inquisition of Edward II and again in 1331 Matthew de Sausmarez was Captain of the Castle at Jerbourg and the Seigneur of the Manor. The fief was mentioned in the Extente (land value assessment) of 1331 in the reign of Edward III of England as having belonged "from time immemorial" to the family of his grandson Matthew. The capture of the Island by the French in 1338 resulted in 1341, after a battle was lost in Les Hubits, St Martin, to Sir Peter de Sausmarez escaping via Petit Port to Jersey, returning after the Island was retaken in 1345.

Of this oldest manor-house only a fragment remains. Its rough but remarkably solid stonework forms the basis of an outhouse on the north-east side of the main buildings and surrounds an arched doorway which was later blocked in with a different form of stone. This is one of the most ancient fragments of unrepaired Norman masonry in the island and can be fairly confidently dated to the mid 13th century.

Both manor and fief remained in the possession of the family until 1557. In that year the Seigneur, George de Sausmarez, died without issue and left his estate to his sister Judith; sixteen years previously she had married an Englishman called John Andrews. who had come to Guernsey from Northamptonshire as Lieutenant to Sir Peter Mewtis, the Governor of the Islands. Their son John, who became known in Guernsey as John Andros, was in 1557, in accordance with Guernsey law, declared Seigneur in his mother's right. His rights to the title and manor being confirmed by a Royal Commission that reported in 1607. It was he who built the second house, running down the slope of the shallow valley towards the fish pond, at right angles to the original one. In a party-wall on the ground floor of this building there is carved, on a lintel over a door leading from the main-hall to a smaller room, the initials I.A. and the date 1585. The lower end of the house is now used as a craft metal workshop, and the upper, which was restored and altered, once in 1759 and again exactly two hundred years later, is still inhabited.

Including John Andros, six members of his family were Seigneurs of Sausmarez over a period of nearly two hundred years. The third of these, Amyas Andros, who was a staunch royalist throughout the Civil War, played a distinguished part as liaison between the King's forces which controlled Jersey and the brave royalist garrison of Castle Cornet. After the Restoration, he was made Bailiff by Charles II, being one of the only two prominent Guernseymen who were not obliged to seek pardon from their Sovereign for their conduct during the Grand Rebellion. His son, Sir Edmund Andros, was in 1674 both Bailiff and Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey and at the same time Governor of the Colony of New York as well as New England, North Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, New Plymouth and New Jersey. In fact it was he, who changed the name from New Amsterdam to New York, when he was its first British Governor. Very little of his time seems to have been spent in Guernsey, for he retired to live in Westminster. One of his reasons for doing so appears from the following clause in his will, dated 1713.

My will is that my said nephew, John, shall build within five years of my death a good suitable house on or at the manor of Sasmares in Guernsey and if the said John or his heirs shall not in that time have built such house (if not built before) then my will is and I appoint my said nephew John or his heirs to pay the sum of £500 unto my nephew George Andros within one year after his or their neglect.