Brecqhou (or Brechou; ) is one of the Channel Islands, located off the west coast of Sark where they are now geographically detached from each other. Brecqhou is politically part of both Sark and the Bailiwick of Guernsey. It has been established in the courts that Brecqhou is a of Sark. The Ministry of Justice, the department of the United Kingdom government with responsibility for the Channel Islands, considers Brecqhou part of Sark.
Name
thumb|1680 map of Sark and "Merchant's Island" (Brecquou); [[South-up map orientation|South is on top, so Brecqhou is located to the right (west) of Sark.]]
The name Brecqhou derives from the Old Norse (slope or escarpment; compare ) and (island or islet; see -hou). It was also formerly known as "Merchant's Island" (). The spellings Brechou, Brehou, Brehoe appear on old maps.
Geography
A mere islet, Brecqhou has a surface area of just . The island is separated from Sark by an extremely narrow sound ( Passage) which can be perilous for rowers. It is traversed frequently by yachts during summer and by fishing boats year round and even forms a part of the route taken by occasional powerboating events in the islands.
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File:Brecqhou_from_the_air.JPG|An aerial view of Brecqhou
File:Brecqhou-north.jpg|A view of Brecqhou, from the north of Sark
File:Brecqhou - Barclay Brothers Castle.jpg|The Barclay Brothers completed building the castle on Brecqhou in 1996. The relevance of the seigneurial privileges and duties that distinguish feudal from civil landowning has decreased as most of the duties relate to agriculture and defence.
Since 1929, the island has been connected to the title of the tenement ', one of the 40 tenements whose owner had to keep a gun for the defence of the fief and, until forfeit in 2008, had a seat in the Chief Pleas. Originally, ', named after the medieval monastery whose site is close to it, was a parcel of land in northwest Sark that was, at that time, owned by the Seigneur himself. When Sibyl Hathaway sold the island of Brecqhou to Angelo Clarke in 1929, she transferred that seat in the Chief Pleas to unrepresented Brecqhou. This was scant loss for her, as she owned more than one tenement and every member of the Chief Pleas was entitled to only one vote.
From 1993, the tenement of Brecqhou was owned by the Barclay brothers, the co-owners of The Daily Telegraph newspaper and former co-owners of The Scotsman. The brothers bought the island for £2.3 million in September 1993. Under the Reform (Sark) Law 1951, the tenant was David Barclay. After assuming ownership, the brothers had intermittent legal disputes with the government of Sark, and expressed a desire to make Brecqhou politically independent. They drove cars on the island and had a helicopter, both of which are banned under Sark law. The architect was Quinlan Terry; it cost £60 million, required just under 120,000 tonnes of material to be brought to Brecqhou, and a number of environmental challenges had to be addressed.
Leonard Joseph Matchan issued postage stamps (labelled "Brechou") on 30 September 1969, but they were suppressed the following day by the Guernsey Post Office when they took over responsibility from Royal Mail for the issue of stamps. Matchan occupied Brecqhou until his death on 6 October 1987. The current tenants issued stamps annually between 1999 and 2013.
Public visits
In 2012, it was reported that the island is open to the public, by prior arrangement.