The old alleys of St Peter Port #8

Park Lane Steps

More steps...These have quite a few personal connections. We used to live in a tiny semi detached house on the main road just around from the bottom of these steps. As he was wont to do, my husband did all sorts of structural alterations without bothering about planning or building regs. That was fine until our neighbour had problems with her drains and the Building Inspector called one lunchtime. When Mick opened the door, which opened straight from the pavement into our lounge by then, said Building Inspector asked him what alterations he had done. Mick said "none". This conversation went around in a circle for a while then the Building Inspector asked whether it might jog Mick's memory if he knew that this had been his gran's house and it didn't look like that then. Strangely the Building Inspector didn't bother about coming in to look but simply took notes about whea Mick said he had done (moving stairs and load-bearing walls and having a bedroom at the top of the stairs that led down to the kitchen with no door at all, let alone a fire door!!) and went off. A week or so later we had a letter on plain paper saying that he'd spoken to his boss who said it was OK as long as we had a smoke detector. Not long after said Building Inspector was in court for doing work on the side for people he visited to inspect... We never heard any more but I still have the letter "just in case"

The building you can see on the left is the Victoria Homes, which is where my dad moved to after my mum died. We had moved before that though. And also when my dad was evacuated before the German Occupation he lived very close to here; I can't remember exactly which house it was.

Finally, these steps lead up to the top of Hauteville, further up than Victor Hugo's house, in fact straight to the Dorset Arms which just happened to be our local at the time we lived there. I've walked up and staggered back down there many a time..