Vale Castle, Guernsey

Earthworks dating from 500 to 600 BC, comprising a double ditch and bank, indicate that an Iron Age fort existed on the hill where Vale Castle now sits.

[2] Around A.D. 968, monks from the Benedictine monastery of Mont Saint-Michel, came to Guernsey to establish the Abbey of St Michael, a community in the north of the island.

According to tradition, Robert II, Duke of Normandy (the father of William the Conqueror), was journeying to England in 1032 to help Edward the Confessor.

The portion going to the monastery, known as Le Fief St Michel, included the land where the castle is located.

[5]: 130–1  During the English Channel naval campaign (1338–1339), the French captured the island and then the castle, where they put its defenders to death.

In 1372 Owain Lawgoch, a claimant to the Welsh throne, led a free company on behalf of France in an attack on Guernsey.

Owain Lawgoch withdrew after killing 400 of the island militia,[6] The poem of the same name refers to the castle as the Château de l'Archange, the location of the last ditch stand against the insurgents.

[2] The Castle was fitted with a signal mast to alert the island to the approach of any vessel, with a fire beacon to give alarm at night.

The defences in Stützpunktgruppe Talfeste also featured flame throwers, two 60 cm searchlight positions, and two 10.5cm K331(f) field guns.

[15] The public can walk through the German era trenches and view Tobruk pits, MG positions and a personnel shelter.