About Jersey Heritage

The Jersey Heritage Trust (“Jersey Heritage”) is the Island’s official museums, archives and historic buildings organisation. We want to help everyone to protect, discover and enjoy learning about Jersey’s heritage.

We are an independent charity, founded in 1981, receiving about 53% of our funding from the States of Jersey. Other income is generated through activities such as admissions charges, sponsorship and venue hire.

Jersey Heritage manages historic buildings, monuments and collections held in trust on behalf of the Société Jersiaise, the National Trust for Jersey and the States of Jersey as well as those we own.

We are governed by a Board of Trustees operating under a constitution agreed by the Government of Jersey, and according to the terms of a Service Level Agreements with the Minister for Education, Sport and Culture. The Director of Jersey Heritage is accountable to the Board of Trustees.

Our purpose

Jersey Heritage’s statement of purpose as incorporated in its constitution, is:

Jersey’s heritage and culture is special. The purpose of the Jersey Heritage Trust is to care for it, promote wide access to it, act as advocates on its behalf and bring imagination to telling its stories so that we inspire people to create a better island for everyone.

Our aims

Everything that Jersey Heritage does is focused on four strategic aims:

Guardianship

Protect Jersey’s archives, collections and historic environment

Discovery

Promote enjoyment of our sites and services to inspire learning about Jersey’s heritage

Community

Give everyone a chance to get involved in caring for Jersey’s heritage

Sustainability

Ensure support and resources to continue our work in the future

Our standards

We are committed to providing Jersey with a first-class museum, archives and heritage service and work to the highest professional standards. We aim to operate to UK national standards in everything we do and we benchmark ourselves against national standards to give our funders and our audience confidence in the quality of our work. We currently meet the following standards:

For museums:

The Museums Libraries and Archives Council’s Museum Accreditation Scheme

For visitor services:

Visit Britain’s Visitor Attraction Quality Assurance Scheme;

For archives:

The National Archive’s Accreditation Scheme;

For staff development:

Investors in People standard.

Our visitor sites and commercial services

We are responsible for Mont Orgueil and Elizabeth Castles, the Jersey and Maritime Museums, La Hougue Bie and Hamptonne, the Jersey Archive and the Sir Francis Cook Gallery and Augrès Store. The Augrès Store houses the Trust’s reserve collections.

We currently have over 100 permanent staff and are joined by a number of additional staff during our main season. Our staff team is highly motivated, team-centred and has achieved remarkable results over the last few years. The organisation has a relatively low staff turnover and a good absence record.

We are also fortunate to have over 300 volunteers who give their time generously to help our work in all areas from family history enquiries at Jersey Archive, to guiding at visitor sites, from conservation of objects in museum stores, to historic boat restoration.

Our staff are located throughout our sites, although the majority are based at the Jersey Museum, Hill Street and the Jersey Archive all year round. Sites are cared for by our team of Site Gardiens with support from seasonal staff including Visitor Services Assistants, Living History demonstrators and volunteers during the high season.

Our visitor sites, The Jersey Museum, The Maritime Museum, La Hougue Bie and Mont Orgueil Castle are open seven days a week all year with Elizabeth Castle open from March to October.

The Jersey Archive is open to the public four days a week (Monday – Thursday) throughout the year and and one Saturday morning opening a month.

Our visitor sites are available for private and corporate hire for functions and wedding ceremonies.

We manage a collection of heritage properties and ‘stone huts’ that are available for hire as self-catering holiday accommodation. Properties include: Radio Tower, Barge Aground, Elizabeth Castle, La Crete Fort, Fort Leicester, L’Etacquerel Fort, Archirondel Tower and Lewis’s Tower.

After many years of outsourcing, Jersey Heritage are now managing the retail site shops internally with the aim of increasing income as a result of offering a better service and product offering to our customers.

We work closely with third party partners to provide catering at the Jersey Museum and operate the cafes at Hamptonne, Mont Orgueil and Elizabeth Castle in house.

We operate the Castle Ferries that run between West Park and Elizabeth Castle so that the ferry journey becomes an integral part of the visitor experience.

Income is generated through admissions, venue hire, retail and catering, fundraising and membership. Many of these activities bring new audiences to our sites as well as generating revenue and in each case we need to balance optimum value to the public against maximum commercial gain.

Other services & events

We also work with advisory panels to give stakeholders a voice. Examples include the panels for historic building listing and for access to public archive records. Formal public consultation has become important in areas like the conservation policies for our historic buildings to ensure that our plans have wide public support.

We hold an exciting array of events, exhibitions and living history demonstrations at all our sites, which aim to bring the past to life by engaging our visitor.

Every year we meet most of the schools in Jersey and all the sites have curriculum links. Reaching out from the sites, Jersey Heritage curators and archivists support reminiscence programmes in care centres for around 600 elderly islanders every year.

Our heritage partners

Nearly all Jersey heritage work is done in partnership with other organisations. Most of the collections and sites in our care are managed on behalf of the Société Jersiaise, the National Trust and the States of Jersey for example. We also work closely with organisations like the Channel Islands Family History Society, the Friends of the Maritime Museum, the Duke’s Leopards and the 1781 Jersey Militia.

Our corporate supporters

Over 40 local businesses support Jersey Heritage each year as members, project partners or sponsors. Corporate members not only provide financial support, but also people to help with conservation projects.

Other information

Jersey Heritage’s standard full time working hours are 8.30am to 5.00pm Monday to Friday.

How to Apply

To apply for a position, please forward the following:

a completed Recruitment Application Form
a comprehensive Curriculum Vitae including details of your academic and professional qualifications, current and previous employment history including accountabilities and achievements, relevant professional training and memberships.
a supporting covering letter stating reasons for your application and describing how your experience and competencies are relevant to the post to:

Mrs Jeannette Achler / Miss Brooklyn O’Neil

Jersey Heritage,

Jersey Museum,

The Weighbridge,

St Helier,

JE2 3NF

Applicants should have residential qualifications or have been resident in the island for more than five continuous years.