WATCH: Why Jersey was the original Love Island...for tax-savvy couples

Friday 24 February 2023

“When you see 500 honeymoon couples all at one time, you know it’s Spring - and there’s any odds you're in Jersey."

The above is how the narrator of a Pathé newsreel from 1959 described the scene of thousands of loved-up honeymoon couples packing into a Jersey hotel.

The footage of hundreds of keen young couples swarming over Jersey's beaches and tourist attractions, which is held in the Pathé archive, harks back to a time when Jersey was the UK's most popular destination for young newlyweds.

Indeed, from the late 1950s to the late 1960s, the island became known as 'The Honeymoon Island'.

Video: Honeymoons Galore, 1964.  (British Pathé/YouTube)

Every April, outside of peak season, Jersey's hotels would be jam packed with lovers streaming off planes from Manchester, London, Hoxton and Wroxton, Leeds and Liverpool.

"It was a very very busy time for the hotel, especially the run up when 200 bedrooms had to be fitted out with double beds - which we didn't have," Robin Seymour, who was a junior manager at the Merton Hotel in the 1950s, told the BBC in 2010.

"We had to chase around, beg, borrow or steal double beds wherever we could get them, and when we ran out of double beds we would have to bolt the twin beds together, stick the mattresses together as best we can."

Pictured: Jersey became known as the 'Honeymoon Island'. 

Other accounts from the time describe crowds of newlyweds boarding propeller planes and holding hands across the aisle, with the air hostesses having to carefully step over them in an effort to serve the drinks. 

But just why were so many honeymooners flocking to Jersey, all at once? 

A different newsreel from the 1960s provides the answer.

Over footage of couples cooing and waving from the windows of a jam-packed hotel, the narrator says: “A Jersey hotel. Every room occupied and everyone on their honeymoon. The explanation, as unlikely as it seems, is income tax.”

He continues: “To get married before April 5^th, the end of the Government’s financial year, qualifies every happy pair for allowances against income tax of £320.

"Fancy romance getting a bonus from the government.” 

Beginning in 1946, hundreds of couples who had postponed marriage due to the war decided to take advantage of a tax provision that any couple married before April 6 in any year can file a joint return for the entire preceding year. 

With the extra windfall in their pockets, Jersey was the obvious destination for young honeymooners. With most young couples having never left mainland Britain, Jersey seemed rather exotic, with its proximity to France.

One newsreel noted: "Everything seems almost continental, scenery, food, atmosphere. All give the feeling of being abroad. And, of course, the 'natives' are friendly.” 

Pictured: A Daily Express Article from 1952 describing life on 'Honeymoon Island'. (Seymour Hotels) 

Not only that, but Jersey was free from 'purchase tax' - a tax levied between 1940 and 1973 on the wholesale value of luxury goods sold in the United Kingdom. That meant cheap French Perfumes, Swiss watches and American cigarettes. 

Such was Jersey's appeal, that the atmosphere could be almost frantic.

One account from the time that Seymour Hotels shared with Express was that of a couple on a flight to Jersey from Cardiff. While on the plane, a young man demanded to see the captain, saying: "This is a matter of life and death!" 

The stewardess got the captain.

"Are you in charge of this plane, like a ship's captain?" the young man asked.

The captain nodded.

"Then marry us please!" he said. "We were waiting at the church, but the parson was held up by the football traffic, so we had to make a dash for it." 

"Why couldn't you have waited?" the captain asked.

"What?" cried the young woman next to the man, "And miss our honeymoon?!"

Pictured: The Honeymoon Ball at the West Park Pavilion, 1968.

Needless to say, Jersey did its best to tempt prospective honeymoon couples, with champagne offered the moment honeymooners stepped off the plane, along with a bouquet of flowers for each bride.

Each year, the States of Jersey would host an enormous 'Honeymoon Ball' in the West Park Pavilion. 

Video: Love on the Dough, 1963. (British Pathé/YouTube)

Of course, the local Hoteliers did what they could to make the most of the situation - in particular, George Frederick Seymour. 

Seymour, 61 at the time, owned six hotels in Jersey including The Merton Hotel and the Pomme d'Or.

In 1946 he noticed that he had 11 honeymoon couples staying at the Merton, in early April.

He discovered that they had all married that month to take advantage of the tax provision and subsequently began an advertising campaign to turn the trickle of lovers into a flood. 

Pictured: An ad for the Merton Hotel, taking advantage of honeymoon season. (Seymour Hotels)

Unfortunately for Jersey, the boom of commercial air travel in the late 1960s and 1970s made glamorous honeymoons abroad became much more accessible, with France and Italy taking precedence over the Channel Islands. 

However, Jersey was firmly in the hearts of many of the couples who travelled to Jersey, with many choosing to return time and time again.