Highfield

Highfield Country Hotel Highfield is a prominent building adjacent to the Ebenezer Chapel on Route d’Ebenezer, Trinity

Over the years Highfield has been many things; a farm, a guest house, a hotel and now a block of apartments.

Originally the property was known as Ebenezer House and the home of the Le Riche family, of Le Riche Stores fame, who gifted an area of land beside the farm as a site for the building of a chapel.

Ebenezer Chapel was completed and opened for services in 1826. There is reference to the property in a small book by Marcus Binney and Calder Loth, which illustrates Victorian properties of renown, in this case, the railings and greenhouse at the front of building, which remained until the development of the hotel in 1991.

Before the war, Ebenezer Farm was owned by Alfie and Ada Cabot (nee Le Couteur) and when they retired their only son took over the farm. In 1937 the elderly couple were faced with no one to run the farm, so they paid a visit to John and Elsie Richardson, who were farming at Les Pieces in St Martin. Elsie was their god-daughter and they pleaded with her and her husband to take it over.

John and Elsie moved to Ebenezer Farm at Christmas 1937 and went on to buy it in the early 1950s. In 1953, their eldest son, John, died at the age of 19 as a result of an accident on the farm. Elsie ran a guest house at the farm when tourism was in its hey-day.

The Richardsons sold Ebenezer Farm in 1963 to Mr and Mrs Le Claire (nee Seymour, of the Seymour Group). They changed its name to the Highfield and ran it as a hotel, while operating a riding school and horse stables in nearby Rue Militaire across the border in St John. The hotel changed hands a number of times after the Le Claire’s moved out; firstly to George Evans then to Mr and Mrs Robinson who sold it in turn to Mr Paggett Brown and Miss Marion Templeton.

In 1986 the hotel was acquired by a company and David Lord was appointed managing director. This company developed the hotel and in the winter of 1991, work began on building a significant extension, which included self-catering apartments, indoor leisure suite and swimming pool, a new kitchen, dining room, bar and conservatory. During the early 2000s the hotel joined the marketing consortium, Best Western, and worked with them until the hotel was sold for redevelopment in October 2007.

Planning permission was granted to convert the former hotel into 41 flats, and to demolish the staff accommodation and build two new dwellings. In 2009 the first residents of the Highfield Country Apartments moved in to the building, which may have changed in terms of its use over the years, but continues to look much the same from the outside.

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  Highfield Country Hotel in Trinity, now apartments
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  The gardens of Highfield Country Hotel