Before she ruled Sark, Sibyl Collings climbed and swam around it

Sibyl Collings knew Sark from the bottom of its cliffs as well as the top.

Before she became Dame of Sark in 1927, she had climbed and swum around the island’s coastline.

She did it with one leg roughly two and a half inches shorter than the other.

William Frederick Collings, Seigneur of Sark from 1882, raised his daughter. He taught her to sail, shoot and climb cliffs. Sark’s coast became part of her education.

It was a formidable classroom.

The island’s plateau is ringed by cliffs. Bays sit below steep paths. Caves open only with the tide. Before modern harbour works, even arriving on Sark could mean landing in a bay and climbing a ladder up the rock.

Dame Sibyl’s public story is usually political. She inherited the fief in 1927 and remained Dame until her death in 1974. She later became closely associated with Sark’s experience during the German Occupation.

But long before the speeches and newspaper profiles, there was the coastline.

Jonathan Parry, writing about Sark in the London Review of Books, describes her as having already “stamped her authority” on the island by climbing and swimming around it before she inherited.

To move around Sark at sea level is to encounter an island very different from the one crossed by the Avenue. Headlands interrupt the route. The cliffs that protect the plateau become obstacles rather than scenery.

Sibyl knew both versions.

The Secret Coast collection follows visitors, artists, swimmers and scientists into Sark’s difficult edges.

Sibyl Collings belongs there for a simpler reason.

It was her home.