Strongpoint Elizabeth Castle

Sand and aggregate for ‘Strongpoint Elizabeth Castle’ was unloaded by mechanical shovel at it’s 19th century harbour beside the Breakwater, from where it was carried up to the level of the Parade Ground by a narrow guage railway. Bags of cement were unloaded from barges by forced labourers, and then carried by hand to the higher ground.

Belgian forced worker Emile Boydens remembers a similar scenario at St Helier Harbour: “We had to unload one of those barges, full of cement. And you know what they used to do in those days, the crane pulls it out and puts it on the pier. We had to carry bag, by bag, by bag, all day, no stop. We even took our shirts off.”

There are numerous reinforced concrete structures around the Castle, the most obvious of which are the massive concrete fire control tower built on the highest point of the Castle Keep, a monolithic concrete cube on the Breakwater from where an underwater minefield was controlled, and two coastal defence bunkers. One of these bunkers is located on the Parade Ground - an inscription was made in the wet concrete beside the gun barrel by Spanish forced workers, as a permanent reminder of their plight. It translates to read: ‘Made by Spaniards 11.08.1943’.

Spaniard John Dalmau was sent to the Castle as a punishment for throwing away German petrol. He wrote that: ‘I worked all day with a pint of clear soup a day as the only food and slept standing all night, due to the fact that I was only allowed about two square feet of floor space in the cell – shared with others condemned for similar offences. At any time during the night we were taken out into the yard and there made to run round and round. If any man went down, he was soon helped to his feet with a few cracks of the whip.’