Pontac House Hotel

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Pontac House Hotel



There has been a hotel on the corner of St Clement's Coast Road and Jambart Lane at Pontac for at least 175 years, and in 1850 the neighbouring house on the coast road was also converted to a hotel.

Today's hotel, known as Pontac House, occupies the whole of the corner site, including, as the recent photograph and 1855 etching above confirm, the original two-storey building with dormer roof windows and typical Victorian balcony at first-floor level which became New Pontac Hotel.

New Pontac Hotel

This establishment, which had previously been the private house, Pontac House, was called the 'New Pontac Hotel' to distinguish it from the neighbouring Old Pontac Hotel, which made the corner. Steed, in his Description of Jersey published in 1809, advised the traveller seeking refreshment at Pontac "to stop at de Rues where he may be certain of at least procuring a good breakfast of plenty, cleanliness and civility". It was the de Rue family which ran the earlier hotel.

In the 1850s the new hotel was opened under the tenancy of John Tallis, a Freemason who entertained his fellows at what was also known as Tallis's Pontac Hotel in 1854. When the Jersey Eastern Railway opened in May 1784, it brought the two hotels plenty of trade through the station opposite.

The old hotel was owned by WIlliam Butcher in 1883 and after he became bankrupt it was run by M White, who was still proprietor in 1910, by which time he had changed the name to Pontac Chalet Hotel.

Parish activities

He ensured that his establishment, which had by then doubled in size, played an active role in the affairs of the parish of St Clement, in which it stood. Bazaars and fetes were held in support of the parish church, and the parish horticultural society's annual show was held in what were then substantial hotel gardens, before transferring to Samares Manor.

The new hotel closed down in 1862 and reverted to being a private house for 85 years. Part of the gardens were sold for building a house. In 1959 the hotel reopened, as Pontac House Hotel.

Today the old hotel has been completely rebuilt and again incorporates the neighbouring Pontac House in one establishment.

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