About
La Hougue Bie is one of the oldest surviving buildings anywhere in the world. Beneath a grass mound twelve metres high in the Jersey countryside lies a Neolithic passage grave built between about 4000 and 3500 BC — older than Stonehenge, older than the Egyptian pyramids, and constructed by farming communities who had reached the island only a few centuries earlier. A low stone passage almost ten metres long runs into the heart of the mound to a cruciform chamber roofed with capstones weighing many tonnes, and at the equinoxes the rising sun shines directly along the passage to strike the end chamber, an alignment its builders clearly intended.
What makes the site extraordinary is not only its age but the way later centuries kept adding to it. In the twelfth century a chapel, Notre Dame de la Clarté, was raised on the summit of the prehistoric mound; in the early sixteenth century Dean Richard Mabon added a second chapel below it, the Jerusalem Chapel, decorated after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In the 1940s German forces cut a command bunker into the flank of the mound to control the artillery defending the island's east coast. Five and a half thousand years of continuous significance are stacked into a single hillock.
The bunker is now a memorial to the forced and slave labourers brought to the Channel Islands during the occupation, many from eastern Europe, whose work built the island's fortifications and whose deaths were not recorded. Its displays are sombre and deliberately unsoftened.
The museum buildings alongside the mound hold Jersey's archaeological and geological collections, including the Le Câtillon II hoard — some seventy thousand Iron Age coins and pieces of gold jewellery buried in Grouville around the middle of the first century BC and found in 2012, the largest Celtic coin hoard ever discovered. A full-size replica Neolithic longhouse in the grounds shows how the passage grave's builders actually lived.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- See the museum galleries before entering the passage grave — the archaeology makes far more sense of the tomb than the tomb does of itself.
- The passage is low and requires stooping for most of its length, so be prepared to bend and take care with your head and footing.
- It is dark and cool inside the chamber; a small torch is useful and warmer clothing is worth having even on a hot day.
- Ask about equinox events if visiting in late March or late September, when the rising sun shines the length of the passage into the end chamber.
- Allow time for the German bunker memorial and read it properly; it is the most sombre part of the site and is easy to hurry past on the way back to the car park.
- Climb the mound to the two chapels — many visitors go into the tomb and leave without realising there is anything on top of it.
- Parking on site is free, which is not the case at most Jersey attractions.
- Combine the visit with Mont Orgueil Castle, four kilometres away on the east coast, for a full day covering both prehistoric and medieval Jersey.
Highlights
The Neolithic Passage Grave
The heart of the site is a passage grave built between roughly 4000 and 3500 BC, making it older than Stonehenge and among the oldest surviving buildings on earth. A stone-lined passage almost ten metres long runs into the mound to a cruciform chamber roofed with capstones weighing many tonnes, moved and placed by a farming community using no metal tools.
Entering means stooping through the low passage into the dark of the chamber, a physical experience that no amount of interpretation can substitute for, and one that visitors consistently describe as the most affecting part of the day.
The Equinox Alignment
At the spring and autumn equinoxes the rising sun shines directly along the passage and strikes the end chamber, an alignment far too precise to be accidental and one that tells us something about how the builders understood their year. It places La Hougue Bie in the same family of astronomically oriented Neolithic monuments as Newgrange in Ireland and Maeshowe in Orkney, and it means the tomb was not simply a container for the dead but a structure timed to the movement of the sun.
Jersey Heritage runs equinox events at which visitors can see the effect.
The Le Câtillon II Coin Hoard
In 2012 two metal detectorists working in a Grouville field found the largest hoard of Celtic coins ever discovered anywhere: some seventy thousand Iron Age coins together with gold torcs and jewellery, buried around the middle of the first century BC and lifted as a single soil block weighing three quarters of a tonne.
The hoard is thought to have been hidden by a tribe from Armorica, in what is now Brittany, as Julius Caesar's campaigns swept through Gaul. Its conservation was carried out publicly over several years, and the material is now displayed at the museum.
The German Command Bunker and Forced Labour Memorial
German forces cut a command bunker into the flank of the prehistoric mound during the occupation of 1940-45, to direct the artillery covering Jersey's east coast. The bunker survives complete and now houses a memorial to the forced and slave labourers brought to the Channel Islands, many from eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, whose work built the island's fortifications and whose deaths in many cases went entirely unrecorded.
The displays are deliberately unsoftened, and they sit in deliberate and uncomfortable proximity to a monument built by another community five and a half thousand years earlier.
Collections
La Hougue Bie combines a Neolithic passage grave of about 4000-3500 BC, two chapels of the twelfth and early sixteenth centuries built on the summit of its mound, and a German command bunker of 1940-45 cut into its flank and now serving as a memorial to forced and slave labourers in the Channel Islands.
The adjacent museum buildings hold Jersey's principal archaeological and geological collections, from the Palaeolithic occupation of La Cotte de St Brelade through the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman periods. Among them is the Le Câtillon II hoard, some seventy thousand Celtic coins with gold torcs and jewellery buried in Grouville in the mid first century BC and found in 2012 — the largest Iron Age coin hoard ever discovered.
A full-size replica Neolithic longhouse stands in the grounds.
The Passage Grave
The Neolithic chambered tomb beneath the mound, entered along a stone passage aligned to the equinox sunrise.
Le Câtillon II
The largest Celtic coin hoard ever found, some 70,000 Iron Age coins with gold torcs and jewellery, discovered in Grouville in 2012.
Memorial to the Victims of Slave Labour
The German command bunker in the mound, now a memorial to the forced and slave labourers brought to the Channel Islands during the occupation.
Archaeology and Geology of Jersey
Island collections from the Palaeolithic at La Cotte de St Brelade through to the Roman period, with the geology of Jersey's separation from the mainland.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.
Nearby Museums (5 within 6 miles)
Maritime Museum and Occupation Tapestry Gallery
Transport & Industry
St Helier — ~43 min walk (2.2 mi)
Jersey Museum, Art Gallery & Victorian House
History & Archaeology
St Helier — ~44 min walk (2.3 mi)