Catching a Rainbow

Roscoff or Rosko in Breton is a small town situated on the north coast of Brittany. It is located in the Départements of Finisterre, the arrondissement of Morlaix and the canton of Saint-Pol-de-Léon and has approximately 4000 inhabitants

A few hundred yards from the shore is the Île-de-Batz. This small island is reached by catching one of the small ferries, which leave the inner harbour when the tide is high. There are regular crossings all year long provided for by three companies. The island covers just a little over 5 square kilometres and has a soft climate benefiting from the effects of the Gulf Stream.
At low tide visitors have to use the impressive footbridge, which stretches from Roscoff harbour to the embarkation point, which then is over halfway to the island.

Roscoff is a bustling fishing port and is well worth a visit before one heads south. Many tourists are only aware of the ferry terminal and fail to take in the charms of this quaint town on their mad dash to somewhere else. Roscoff has numerous restaurants, bars and cafes and is a perfect stop off for coffee, lunch or a weekend before heading on to pastures new.

Roscoff was formed following the break up of the ancient parish of Plouénan. And was split between the two parishes of Saint-Pol-de-Léon and Toussaint. In 1790, Roscoff became an independent commune instead of merely being the harbour and port for the nearby town of Saint-Pol-de-Léon.

In 1375, the harbour was destroyed by the army of the Earl of Arundel, captain of the British at Brest. It was later rebuilt at its current location, at Kroas Batz.(The Cross of Batz).

In1539 the towns name changed from Rosgo to Rosgoff and ultimately the modern spelling Roscoff.

On the 15th August 1548, the six-year-old Mary, Queen of Scots, having been betrothed to the Dauphin François (aged 12), disembarks at Roscoff. She had already been the Queen of Scotland since 1542 following the death of her father James V. There is a spot between the town and the old harbour where Mary was first supposed to have set foot on French soil.

Les capucins (Capuchines) an order of friars in the Roman Catholic Church and the chief and only permanent offshoot of the original Franciscans built a convent between 1621 et 1682 in the town.


In the 1960’s Roscoff was developed as a ferry terminal serving the UK and Ireland and Brittany Ferries have been using the port for much of that time which has boosted the local economy.


However, Roscoff is most famous for its Onions so much so that a museum opened in the town in 2004.
The original onions reportedly arrived as a single seed on a boat from Portugal sometime in the middle of the 17th Century. To begin with onions were cultivated in private gardens, but this soon spread to local farms and very soon a thriving onion industry had developed.
Roscoff was ideally suited for onion production with its light sandy soils, the warming effect of the Gulf Stream and an abundant supply of nutrient rich seaweed, which is essential to give the Rose de Roscoff their unique colour and taste.
However, the success of onion production in this region of Brittany was not just due to the soil conditions or the climate - there was a need for the onion in Roscoff.

Roscoff was a fishing port, Breton mariners and fishermen alike travelled the world’s seas in search of trade and fish. The onion was an ideal commodity in two important ways. Firstly it could be traded easily as the onion could be kept for long periods of time and so was ideal for slow wind powered transportation. Perhaps more importantly the onion was also good for the seamen’s health, as onions provide a rich source of vitamin C and was used to fend off scurvy, the scourge of early seafarers.

Before the onion, Roscoff was renowned for its linen canvas as well as salt, which it exported primarily to England via Plymouth, but in the 18th Century economic conditions changed, maritime exportation declined and the salt and linen markets crashed. The Roscovites were forced to find another way of making a living.

The British were great consumers of onions. From the coalfields of the Rhondda, to the Scottish highlands and the docks of London the British onions played a great part in British cooking. Their farmers however, produced surprisingly very few onions to feed this desire.

It was Henri Olivier who in an attempt to resolve the problem of falling local onion sales made the first successful trip to Plymouth in 1828. Hundreds were to follow Olivier over the next 178 years and became known as the Onion Johnny’s.
The Onion Johnny’s were Roscovites who transported their onions to Plymouth, usually in July, and then distributed them from door to door usually using a bicycle as their means of transport. Vast quantities of onions were transported to England, stored in barns and then delivered door to door by the Breton farmers. The farmers then returned to Brittany in December or January.
The trade in onions was not the only trade the Johnny’s carried out. Once they had sold their onions they returned to France taking with them considerable quantities of British clay peg tiles, which were not available in Brittany. The Bretons used slate as their principle roofing material. Even today when one sales up and down the north coast of Brittany remnants of this return trade can be seen by the red tiled roofs dotted along the coast.

The golden age was during the 1920s; in 1929 nearly 1,400 Johnnies imported over 9,000 tonnes of onions to the UK. The Great Depression, followed by the devaluation of the Pound in the early 1930s, ended the era as trade suddenly fell, reaching a low in 1934, when fewer than 400 people imported under 3,000 tonnes.
In the aftermath of World War II, onions, in common with other goods, were subject to import restrictions, and were obliged to trade through a single company. By 1973 the number of Johnny’s had dropped to 160 people and 1,100 tonnes, and had fallen again to around 20 Johnny’s by the end of the 20th century.
Although having declined in number since the 1950s to the point where only a few remain, the Johnnies were once very common, and with the renewed interest since the late 1990s by the farmers and the public in small-scale agriculture, numbers have recently made a recovery.
The last London based Onion Johnny, Jean Le Roux, died a short while ago.

The Rose de Roscoff, the official name of the onion, has been awarded protection under the French Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée.