 In 1759 the Governor of Guernsey , John West , had the priory destroyed to prevent French forces from capturing the island during the Seven Years ' War . In the early nineteenth century , a farmhouse was built on Lihou , and the island was listed as being owned by Eleazar le Marchant , who held the post of lieutenant bailiff of Guernsey . Eleazar made an ultimately unsuccessful attempt , in 1815 , to suppress the seaweed industry based around Lihou . In a book published in the same year , William Berry noted the presence of an " iron hook of a gate hinge " on some rocks , approximately three miles out at sea from Lihou , along with the remains of old roads , and surmised that Lihou may have been significantly larger in the past but that the sea had eroded a considerable portion . Through the remainder of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth century , the island changed hands between a succession of owners including James Priaulx in 1863 , Arthur Clayfield in 1883 , and Colonel Hubert de Lancey Walters in 1906 . 
