Alderney History, Language and Culture

History of Alderney

The most northerly of the Channel Islands, Alderney is a British Crown Dependency despite being just 15km (9.3 miles) to the west of La Hague on Normandy’s Cotentin Peninsula.

Alderney became an island as waters rose during the Neolithic period and has been inhabited almost as long. There are traces of Roman occupation, but many of the outward signs of the island’s early human history were lost to extensive military construction in the 19th century and then again during the Nazi occupation in World War II – Alderney, along with its fellow Channel Islands being the only part of the British Commonwealth to be occupied by Germany.