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Fort Saumarez is a Martello tower in Saint Peter, Guernsey, on a headland that forms the northern tip of L'Erée and extends to the Lihou causeway. It was constructed in 1804 on the site of an existing battery after the onset of the Napoleonic Wars, and during the tenure (1803-1813) of Lieutenant Governor General Sir John Doyle. Doyle named the tower for the Guernsey native and renowned Royal Navy Captain, Sir James Saumarez, who at the time was commander of British naval forces in the Channel Islands. To simplify matters, Doyle had a local builder named Gray construct the tower, and two others, see below, under the rubric of 'fieldworks', thereby bypassing the Ordnance Corps.
The Fort Saumarez tower, like the other two Guernsey Martello towers, Fort Grey and Fort Hommet, was intended as a keep for the battery in which it was placed. The Guernsey Martellos are smaller than the British towers, with the Fort Saumarez and Fort Hommet towers being smaller than the Fort Grey tower. Each mounted a 24-pounder carronade on the roof to protect the battery. Fort Saumarez and Fort Hommet also have exterior staircases up to the second floor.
Doyle was responsible for substantial fortification efforts elsewhere in Guernsey, including the construction of the two other Martello towers. Because of its location, Fort Saumarez also served as one of six to ten optical telegraph stations that ringed the coast to give warning of approaching vessels.In 1852, the battery at Fort Saumarez received 32-pounder guns and 8' shell guns in place of some of its 24-pounder guns.
During World War II and the German occupation of the Channel Islands, the Germans recognized the enduring utility of the site and built a four-storey concrete observation tower on top of the fort. At some point the battery around the Fort Saumarez tower was demolished. Fort Saumarez is now privately owned and not publicly accessible.
References:We visited today & wrre able to walk around some of the outside. Wr discoved someGerman trenches in remarkable good condition, at the front of the tower, an air raid shelter & small flak gun emplacement.
The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.