Saint Anne is located about 10 miles (15 km) off the coast of Auderville in the Manche department of the Normandy region of north-western France.

[6] The Luftwaffe command bunker and tower and the German naval tactical headquarters were both located in St Anne during the Second World War.

The ancient parish church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, which was at the lower end of the main street, fell into ruins and was replaced in the late 1580s by a chapel of St. Anne.

[11] During the Second World War, in the period between 1940 and 1945, Germans occupied the entire island, with their headquarters and military establishments located at St.

The Germans converted the place into a concentration camp; the labour force of 6,000 suffered untold miseries and many fatalities.

The defence system featured a network of tunnels dug in the several islands, including Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney.

These tunnels had a clear rock cover of 35 metres (115 ft), which made them impregnable to aerial bombing.

As the island was re-surveyed after the German occupation, no land records are available for the period before 1945, although baptism registers since 1662 have been located from several sources.

Public facilities include the logically arranged network of harbour, roads, airport, railway (the only one in the Channel Islands), school and hospital.

Island Hall on the north side of the square was built in 1763 by Governor John Le Mesurier and served as Alderney's Government House, and later as a Roman Catholic convent school.

Also known as Alderney Harbour, Braye is located on the north side of the island at the mouth of the English Channel.

[19] Aurigny Air Services[20] (founded in Alderney in 1968), are the only commercial airline that operate flights to and from this airport.

Serving a population of 2,400, the hospital was established in 2008 and has 24 beds,[1] twelve of which are designated for medical, post-operative, maternity, or paediatric care.

[1] As Alderney, unlike the UK, is not covered by the National Health Service, the hospital is effectively a private practice in which a fee is payable for all care provided.

A.C. Swinburne's poem Les Casquets is based on the Houguez family, who actually lived on those islets for 18 years.

The daughter falls in love with a carpenter from Alderney, but moving to his island finds life there too busy.

She finds the "small bright streets of serene St Anne" and "the sight of the works of men" too much and returns to Les Casquets.