Beauport

On the coast

Beauport

Beauport Bay, on Jersey's southwest coast, to the west of St Brelade's Bay, is one of the island's most beautiful bays. The limited, but well maintained parking area at the top of the cliffs, combined with the long walk down a steep path to the bay, ensures that it never becomes too crowded
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Beauport is also a popular mooring point for yachts and other pleasure craft venturing out from St Aubin's or St Helier Harbours on sunny summer days.

The land sloping down to the beach and the car park at the top are in public ownership, having been gifted to the Public of the Island in 1950 by John (Jack) Campbell Boot, 2nd Baron Trent (1889-1956) who inherited it from his father Jesse, in his lifetime one of the island's greatest benefactors.

Jesse Boot bought the land from James Matthew Balls in February 1923 as a gift for his wife Florence, who having been asked what she would like as either a birthday or Christmas present, replied that she would really like a bay of her own. It was her wish that her son should donate the bay to the Public of the Island two years before she died.

In 1950, at the time of the gift to the Public, the Jersey Evening Post reported:"In handing over to the people of this Island his property at Beauport, Lord Trent adds to the debt of gratitude which Jersey owes to the Trent family. To his father and to his mother, the Island owes that great lung on the eastern side of the town – the FB Playing Fields – and on the west that other fine open space, Millbrook Park".

The little granite summerhouse adjacent to the entrance of the car park replaced a wooden bungalow, which was destroyed by fire in October 1963. In 1964, this building was acknowledged as being in the use of The Honourable Mrs Dorothy Florence Bruce, née Boot, eldest daughter of John Campbell Boot. The Public Works Committee in January 1964 agreed that the building could be replaced. Mrs Dorothy Bruce married Wilfrid Montagu Bruce in 1913. He died in 1953 and she passed away in Jersey in 1980. Descendents of Jesse, Florence and John Boot still own and make use of the summerhouse today.