Lourdes Convent – The People

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In 1901 there were just fourteen French nuns living and working in Brighton (there were more in Hove).  By 1911 there were over 50 and three new convents had sprung up.  During the Terror of 1794, just over 100 years previously, countless nuns had fled France in fear of their lives and sought refuge in England.  In the years between 1901 and 1911, a different kind of intolerance drove their sisters from their French convents (see The Limes)

The nuns from Nevers arrive in Brighton

The situation of the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction in Nevers was difficult, to say the least.  In a letter written, in English, from the safety of Brighton, a nun describes the situation to a local priest:

“You know too well, Revd Father, how much we are persecuted in France; we have already more than one hundred schools closed and our Mother Superior General has, at this moment about nine hundred nuns on her hands and is most anxious to find shelter for them.” 11 October 1903.

Read more: Lourdes Convent – The People

The priest in question was Fr Joseph Livesey, priest in charge of St Joseph’s Church in Elm Grove, Brighton from 1899 until 1905.  As early as November 1902 Fr. Livesey was aware of the plight of nuns and priests in France and their need for new, safer, homes.  He wrote to Bishop Bourne of Southwark:

“I should most cordially welcome the Sister of Charity to St Joseph’s Mission and I believe that apart from their enabling me to maintain an assistant priest, the help they would render me by the instruction of children and converts and visiting the houses of the poor would be an immense spiritual advantage.”

[It must be said that money could at times be a bone of contention.  Collections had to be made.  Priests had to be paid.  Buildings had to be maintained.]

On 25 July 1903, five nuns from Nevers arrived in Brighton to find that Fr. Livesey had found a new home for them next to his presbytery. The house was No. 10 Wellington Road, Brighton.  The sisters named the house ‘Nazareth’ and later it became the Convent of Mary the Immaculate.

At the same time, another community from  Nevers was being established in Tonbridge.

The arrival of the small band of nuns had not been without some difficulties on the part of the English authorities.  The intercession of at least one highly-respected French priest, Father Rosette, had been necessary for the community to find itself a home.

The sisters had already identified a house they would like for their convent.  Formerly run as a Catholic school, it was well placed near Preston Park. However, Bishop Bourne advised the community that setting up in that area would be expensive:  as there was no Catholic church in the neighbourhood, the nuns would have to pay for the upkeep of a chaplain – this would cost in the region of £150.00 a year. A more economical solution would be to attach themselves to an existing church of St Joseph’s in Elm Grove.  The chaplain would live in the presbytery and this would cost no more than £80.00 pa. As has been seen, Father Livesey of St Joseph’s was ready and willing to accommodate the Sisters of Nevers.

The Sisters set about their work in Brighton

Elles visitent les malades soit à l’hôpital soit à domicile ; elles ont organisé un ouvroir pour les jeunes filles, et sont heureuses de seconder le Curé de la paroisse pour l’instruction religieuse des personnes qui le désirent.  [They visited the sick either in hospital or at home; they organised a sewing circle for young girls and were happy to support the parish priest by giving religious instruction to those who wanted it.]

The Sisters made it clear that they were hoping to fit seamlessly into Brighton life.  A note made at the time stresses: Dans l’immédiat, il ne faut pas arriver en conquérantes et ne faire concurrence à personne. [At the moment we must not come here as conquerors, nor must we compete with any others.]

This seems a strange attitude for newcomers to take.  However, the nuns from Nevers were very aware that the Covent of the Sacred Heart in the Upper Drive, Hove was already a well-established school, as was the Convent of the Blessed Sacrament in Walpole Road.  No toes were to be trodden on.

Pupils were few and far between.  The community was described as living in poverty, hoping for lady boarders, pupils … and an income:

« La communauté vit dans la pauvreté, en attendant dames pensionnaires, élèves … et ressources. »   An income was needed, not just for the nuns day-to-day living expenses.  The Bishop of Southwark had put an onerous condition on the five members of the community: they had (in effect) to earn enough money in order to: Fournir des honoraires suffisants pour faire vivre le prêtre qui remplirait les conditions d’aumônier. [Provide adequate remuneration for the needs of a priest who would act as chaplain.]

There was one stipulation which made life, and livelihood, particularly difficult for the community.  Initially, they were not allowed to take English students – despite already having applications from two sets of English parents.

In a later, undated, prospectus for the 10 Wellington Road school, terms were modest:

The hoped-for French boarders and pupils did arrive by September 1903 – but by mid-July 1904 the sisters realised that ‘Nazareth’ was too small to accommodate the number of people needed to bring in an adequate income.  New premises had to be found.

Arrival at Preston Park

The large house just north of Preston Park was still available.  For over 25 years, it had been run as a ladies’ catholic school by Miss Emma Visick.  Miss Visick had retired in 1902.  This property would prove to be the perfect new home for the nuns from Nevers.  The house had been called St John’s.  Now the name was to be changed to The Convent of Notre Dame of Lourdes, or more simply Lourdes Convent. The Bishop had stipulated that a small group of the Nevers sisters should stay at Wellington Road and the whole community still functioned under the aegis of St Joseph’s parish.

One year later, on 29 July 1904, a small group of nuns moved into St John’s.  They must have had a busy summer getting the school back into good running order.  In September, a new term started with 12 young girls and one small boy.  The initial refusal to allow the sisters to take in English as well as French pupils, was rescinded, mainly for economic reasons, after the move to Withdean.

Tensions

Finally, by 1905, the sisters “had the consolation of preparing the pure hearts of children for the reception of their First Communion.” Catholic Times and Catholic Opinion 20 June 1905.

Matters were not as settled as the nuns could have wished.  Tensions started to spring up after Father Livesey left St Joseph’s.  His replacement was Father George Tatum.  The authorities had offered Fr. Tatum a parish in Brighton as “the bracing sea air [would help him to] speedily regain is health and strength which has been sorely tried in Lewisham.” (West Kent Argus 21 February 1905).  Fr. Tatum had been serious ill with enteric fever (a form of typhoid).  At that time, in an age when there were no antibiotics, the medical solution for the disease was a series of abdominal operations. Fr. Tatum was a sick man, probably in pain.  This alone may not have caused difficulties between the community at Lourdes Convent and  Fr. Tatum. 

There may have been a further problem.  A convert from the Anglican church in 1883, Fr. Tatum was perhaps less open to continental influences than his predecessor, or was he less familiar with the traditions of convents (despite the fact that there were at least three Anglican convents in the area at the time), or was he a Francophobe or simply somewhat of a misogynist?

Whatever the case, in his letters, Fr. Tatum wrote many harsh comments about the small band of nuns: both about those who remained to help out at St Joseph’s and about those who had moved away to set up the convent at St John’s in Withdean.

As early as March 1905, Fr. Tatum was writing, rather uncharitably, a private letter to a fellow priest:

“I am not favourably impressed by them.  The two who do the Sacristy here look so gloomy and sulky that it is depressing to see them. I dislike having women creeping about the Sacristy but I suppose there is no help for it… one is sorry for these nuns but they are not interesting and away from France have no object to justify their existence.  The Withdean nuns do not strike me as being intelligent.  I wonder what sort of education they are capable of giving.”

In subsequent letter, Fr. Tatum uses the word “irritating” twice to describe the sisters.  He then goes on to reveal that, to him, “the impression they give one is that the French religion has become so overwhelmingly feminine that men are distrustful and that this is why no one moves a finger to keep them in France.”  By March 1906 he wrote to a fellow priest:  “They are the most odious set of women that I have ever met with.” So much for being a brother and support to those who had been hounded out of their own country.

At this stage, six nuns had settled in Withdean, leaving five nuns at 10 Wellington Road to teach and to serve Fr Tatum’s parish of St Joseph’s (Elm Grove).  By May 1905, Fr Tatum seems to have run out of patience and at the end of May is suggesting to the Bishop of Southwark that the Mother General from Nevers “should be asked to close the convent at 10 Wellington Road and remove the nuns.”  Two hastily written notes at the top of the letter tell a slightly different story:  the first is from the Bishop’s office asking his chaplain Fr. Du Plerny: “What do you think of these nuns?”; the second is from Fr. du Plerny saying  “They are alright”.  Faint praise admittedly, but it was not the general will that the Convent of the Immaculate Conception at Elm Grove be closed.  But closed it was not long after.

The school

The excellence of the teaching at Lourdes Convent was quickly recognised in the wider community.  Within a couple of years of setting up the school, the nuns’ pupils were passing important exams – at a time when many girls were expected to go into basic clerical or manual jobs, or prepare to get married.  In 1907 even French newspapers were prepared to praise the teaching skills of the nuns:

[The Sisters of Nevers, who, in France, so rightly deserve their name of Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction are still worthy of their reputation even in exile. Of the four pupils who sat the University of Oxford exams, four passed this year.  Congratulations to the dedicated mistresses of St John’s, Withdean, Brighton.] Note: The girls passed the Oxford Local Senior School Examination for students over 19.  All the girls took the exam using their second language: English.

La Gazette du Centre 2 September 1907 Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France

[The Sisters of Nevers, who, in France, so rightly deserve their name of Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction are still worthy of their reputation even in exile. Of the four pupils who sat the University of Oxford exams, four passed this year.  Congratulations to the dedicated mistresses of St John’s, Withdean, Brighton.] Note: The girls passed the Oxford Local Senior School Examination for students over 19.  All the girls took the exam using their second language: English.

Le Gaulois 18 April 1908 Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France

Fifty years later, according to the 1957 report on the school by H.M. Inspectors, girls at the school (or their parents) had not raised their sights much higher:

“out of 111 leavers over the past 3 years, 21 were transferred elsewhere as a result of their parents leaving  Brighton, 10 went to other schools, 4 have gone to university or technical college, 3 are training to be teachers, including one at the Royal Academy (studying speech and drama), 6 have gone to art school, drama or dancing, 7 ln to nursing or physiotherapy, 2 into catering, 1 into modelling, 4 to be hairdressers or cosmeticians, 6 into banks or offices, 5 into shops, and 37 (or almost one third of the total) into secretarial training.”

But back to earlier times.

The pages of the 1911 census pages relating to the school have been filled out in beautiful copper-plate handwriting – the work either of the Mother Superior, Marie Péguillan or one of the other seven French-born nuns who were teaching at the school.  Details were completed with scrupulous accuracy.  The home town of each nun is mentioned (eight French, two English), as were those of the nine French pupils and the four English ones.  The oldest person in St John’s was Sister Bernard Bradley.

The sisters

Sister Bernard Bradley deserves at least a paragraph to herself. Born in Leeds in 1852, Clara Theresa Bradley had become a novice in the convent at Nevers in 1872, taking the veil four years later.  Her chosen name in religion was Sister Bernard.  She started her teaching career in a girls’ convent boarding school in Limoges, but on the expulsion of teacher-nuns from France, Sr. Bernard, as an English speaker, was a natural choice to accompany the advance party of nuns who arrived in Brighton in 1903.  Sister Bernard remained at Lourdes Convent until her death in 1931.

The Visitation (Bishop’s Inspection) of Lourdes Convent in 1905 reveals very much more about the character of Sister Bernard: “An old English sister [she was 53 at the time] who thinks she ought to be the Rev. Mother or failing that, a chief adviser of the Mother General at the Mother House [in Nevers], would prefer to return to France. Speaks too freely to externs; submissive spirit wanting, was warned by Superior of the difficulties she lays herself open to through her discontent; effect [of the warnings] apparently slight.”

However, Sister Bernard was not the only one who had dreams of being Mother Superior.  The Visitation reveals much the same thing about Sister Marie Grenet.  Sister Marie-Stanislas, the Superior spoke “little English”.  The convent was a true community composed of quite disparate personalities.

Three little girls from Brighton

Jillisen Taylor had been born in Great Yarmouth but by 1920 her parents had moved to Rottingdean which at the time was a village outside the boundary of Brighton.  Jillisen’s mother, Mabel Loates, came from a Newmarket family closely connected to horseracing – Mabel’s four uncles were famous jockeys.  Uncle Tom was, in particular, spectacularly wealthy.  After his retirement at the very beginning of the 20th century, Tom Loates came to live in Brighton, at Lion Mansions on the seafront. (Lion Mansions was later absorbed into the Royal Albion Hotel.)  The lure of living near Brighton racecourse, where he had so many successes, must have been great.

When Tom married his nurse, Isabelle, in 1909, he and his new wife moved to 139 Preston Road (since vanished under the Wellsbourne development).  After Tom Loates’ death in 1911, Mabel, the daughter of his brother Charles,  came to live with her aunt Isabelle in Preston Road.  Mabel must have known about Lourdes Convent which was only half a mile north in the same road. Mabel later married Mr Taylor and eventually moved back to the Brighton area.

Jillisen is the first of the three Brighton girls to have close connections with the Preston Park area. She was also first of three conversions: in this case, the Taylors were a protestant family.  There is no way of knowing why Jillisen embraced Catholicism and became Sister Mary Christine. Sister Mary Christine died 2003.

A new pupil arrived in the school in 1908.  Phoebe (Effie) Hobbs had been born in Dorset, but had accompanied her mother to Brighton in 1895.  Mrs Hobbs, Effie’s mother, had taken the post of housekeeper/companion to an elderly lady in a house almost immediately opposite Lourdes Convent, so although Effie was a Protestant, the school gave her a good Catholic education.  So much so that she converted to Catholicism and took her vows in 1919.  Effie later became a teacher at the school.

Violet Coen was born in 1903, not a stone’s throw away from Miss Visick’s Catholic school,   or to be more precise, she was born at 22 Preston Park Avenue, a 500m walk across Preston Park to the newly founded Lourdes Convent school – a school she probably would not have attended, despite its proximity.

Violet’s parents had been born in Russia.  Louis Coen was a successful tobacco and cigarette manufacturer with a shop in fashionable East Street in Brighton.  The family was Jewish. There is no indication as to why Violet converted to Catholicism.  There is no indication that any of her family converted.  Her parents are buried in the Brighton Jewish Cemetery.  Maybe Violet could not reconcile her father to her choice of religion: Louis died in 1922, but Violet did not take her final vows as Sister Martha until 1927.

Sister Martha’s life as a nun was fairly typical: her first “posting” was to a convent of the Nevers community in Genoa where she taught for 12 years.  She then returned to the community’s Tonbridge convent in Kent in 1939.  There she became a senior teacher before finally coming to Brighton as Mother Superior from 1969 until her death in 1972.

The community expands

By the time of the 1921 census the school and convent had grown considerably: eleven teachers, mainly natives of France, were in charge of 26 almost exclusively English-speaking pupils.  An excellent staff ratio. Phoebe Hobbs is not described as a “nun” until she appears in the 1939 Register.  The use of Phoebe’s birth name in the 1939 description may well have been a legal requirement. In religion, Phoebe was Sister Marie Agnes.  In 1963, at the age of 70, she had the distinction of becoming both Mother Superior of the convent and head teacher of the school.  Effie / Sister Marie Agnes died in Hove at the grand age of 90.

Paradoxically, as with Sister Bernard and Effie Hobbs, it seems to have been the nuns from the English side of the Channel whose names have lingered.

Mother Theresa McMurdie was born Alice McMurdie in 1857.  She was the fifth of her parents’ 10 children, all born in London. The Irish Weekly and Ulster Examiner newspaper claimed, in 1947, that Sister Theresa had taken her vows in Nevers in 1866.  She would have been only nine years old at the time.  This would have been not only unlikely, but illegal under canonical law.  However, the point of the Irish Weekly article was that Sr. Theresa had actually met, in person, Sister Bernadette Soubirous. Perhaps more importantly, the article revealed that Sr. Theresa had been teaching at Lourdes convent for 43 years, putting her firmly in the first cohort of teachers in St John’s.

Public domain

Bernadette Soubirous (1844-1879) ) Sr Bernadette took her vows in Nevers in 1866.  She was canonised in 1933.  The primary school now on the site of Lourdes Convent was given her name: St Bernadette.

The nuns of Lourdes Convent did not hide themselves from the world.  Alice McMurdie, along with most of the other English born nuns, were regular voters in general and local elections.  On electoral rolls for the years 1931 until the year of her death in 1954 Alice appears, sometimes under her “civil” name, sometimes as Marie-Therese.

Off to Japan

I have left the most adventurous of the nuns until last.

In 1907, two young women passed the Senior Oxford Local exam.  They were placed in a group for candidates “having exceeded the age of 19 on July 1st 1907”.  The two were MJ Gourmand and JH Gourmand, in other words, Marie and Jeanne aged 28 and 19 respectively.  It would at first appear that the two young women were rather old to be taking these exams which later became A-levels.

Paris-born Marie had taken her vows in Nevers in 1904.

The certificate detailing Marie Gourmand’s profession © Archives de la Maison-Mère des Sœurs de la Charité de Nevers

Almost immediately afterwards, Marie had made the journey to Brighton to help set up the new community.  She was now Sister Stanislas Marie.  Presumably, as a teacher at the school, she needed to improve her English and, for the reputation of the school, acquire some “professional” qualification.

Marie’s little sister, Jeanne, had been a pupil at a convent school in Provins (just south-east of Paris) until 1902.  She was 16 when her school closed (or was forced to close as a result of the new Loi des Associations), so in 1904 she followed Marie to Withdean to continue her schooling.  On her return to France, she entered the convent at Nevers shortly after her father’s death in 1907 and had taken her vows in 1910. Her first “posting” was to Italy before she was recalled to France where she taught in Montpellier for 64 years. By now she was 90, but life still held five years of peace for her in a religious retirement home in Pau.  She died aged 95, in 1982.

Marie (Stanislas Marie) does not appear in the 1921 census for Withdean.  She had already been given a new mission.  With Mother Marie Clotilde Lutinier and five other sisters from Nevers, she had set sail for Japan.

© Archives de la Maison-Mère des Sœurs de la Charité de Nevers.

1921, seven sisters set sail from Marseille, France, as “seed sowers” bound for the unknown – Japan. https://neyagawa.goguynet.jp/2022/04/19/nevers-seibo-raymond/

Two months later, on 8 May, the sisters landed in in the port of Kobe. And how strange these young Japanese women must have appeared to the nuns. 

Sister Stanislas, clearly identifiable by her spectacles, https://neyagawa.goguynet.jp/2022/04/19/nevers-seibo-raymond/

The Archivist at Nevers has confirmed that the picture below shows the following. Top row: left, Mother Marie Clotilde Lutinier; right: Mother Xavier Delmas; middle row, Sœur Henri Lamadon; Mother Charles Berthelin; Mother Stanislas Gourmand: bottom left: Mother Agnès Coustié; bottom right: Sœur Saint-Yves de Corbion.

Photo: https://www.neversjapon.org/

Even the poor reproduction of the photograph above gives a clear indication of Sister Stanislas’ benevolent features.  These did not desert her in later life.

Sister Stanislas in middle age and in old age. © Archives de la Maison-Mère des Sœurs de la Charité de Nevers

Life in Japan must have been challenging.  Sr. Stanislas seems to have thrived on the challenge.  She died aged 91, still in Japan, which perhaps she had grown to love.

Astonishingly, the Visitation of 1905 had described Sister Stanislas in the most laconic terms: “Somewhat nervous, but appears to be satisfactory”.  What a brave woman to have overcome her nerves to set out on a great adventure.

Mid-20th century

Unfortunately, much of the convent’s history from 1906 until the 1940s has been lost, as very few letters and documents from that time have been preserved in the diocesan archive of Arundel and Brighton. Fortunately, information has survived in the archive of the mother house in Nevers.

By the early 1950s, there were still at least 11 sisters teaching, or working as servants, in Lourdes Convent.

The 1957 Department of Education Inspection of the school is not glowing but shows that the 330 pupils were getting an above-average education.  The school was classed as a grammar school (before the abolition of the 11+ exam in Sussex) and so, of the 179 pupils in the senior school, 52 were having their fees paid by local authorities.

Exactly how many of the Lourdes Convent community were of French origin in the mid-20th century is impossible to tell.  The 1960 electoral register lists eleven voters who must have been British citizens.  Both Phoebe Hobbs and Jillisen Taylor appear regularly in those registers.

Photograph of the nuns of Lourdes Convent.  Possibly taken in the 1950s. © Archives de la Maison-Mère des Sœurs de la Charité de Nevers

It is a pity that not one of the nuns is identified in the photograph above. Whatever their native language, the nuns left a strong impression on their pupils. Contributors to the website MyBrightonandHove (add link) recall, amongst others, Mother Clare (the cook), kindly Mother Mary Elizabeth, Mother Mary Agnes (Effie Hobbs), and fun-loving sports teacher, Mother Mary Margaret.  Mother Mary Margaret appears to have been zealous in her support of sports for girls: the pupils of the school hosted netball matches, won tennis matches and generally did well in many aspects of sport.

A 1963 document from the Archives at Nevers reveals that in June, « il y avait 11 Sœurs dont six pour les classes, quatre pour les enfants et les services généraux.  350 élèves catholiques et protestantes (le quart de l’effectif total). » [There were 11 nuns, of which six were classroom teachers and four took care of the children or were servants.  There were 350 pupils, both catholic and protestant (the latter making up one quarter of the number).]

The bouffant hair styles and the rather cheeky grins seem to be typical of the early 1960s.  These tennis players were photographed in 1962. © Archives de la Maison-Mère des Sœurs de la Charité de Nevers

The community contracts

Gradually over the years, as fewer and fewer girls took the veil and as the numbers in the school rose to over 300, the nuns were joined by several active lay teachers who were also remembered by the “old girls”.  Newspapers show that there were even dog shows at the convent in 1966 and 1968.  They do not reveal which enterprising sister or teacher organised the events.

One unsettling event for some of the pupils followed the death of Mother Superior, Marie-Bernard Colombiès, in 1956.  A pupil recalls that “we all had to file past her body to pay our respects”. The Archives in Nevers quote a homily from a senior nun in 1959:

« La vaillante Mère Marie-Bernard Colombies est morte à la tâche, comme il convenait à son actif tempérament. Identifiée à Lourdes Convent qui lui doit sa parfaite installation, la charge semblait ne pas peser à ses 85 ans. Elle en restait l’animatrice et l’âme par son autorité indiscutable et indiscutée, et néanmoins très maternelle, son amour de nos traditions familiales, son abandon confiant en la Providence » [Doughty Mother Marie-Bernard Colombiès died in harness, as befitted her energetic personality.  She was synonymous with Lourdes Convent which owes its flawless organisation to her.  Despite her 85 years, she bore the burden lightly.  She remained the Convent’s guiding force and its soul through the strength of her indisputable and undisputed, yet maternal authority, through her love of our community’s traditions and her trusting submission to Providence.]

The habit

In the early days of the convent. the sisters were still wearing their full habit with its white cornet beneath a black veil.  The distinctive white bands which lay over the bodice of the nun’s robe, alas, disappeared from the habit in the 1960s as seen below.

An unnamed  nun teaching in Lourdes Primary School.  1960s © Archives de la Maison-Mère des Sœurs de la Charité de Nevers

Today (2026), sisters of the order are most likely to be in sober knee-length skirt, blouse and cardigan.

The senior school is closed

A crisis in Catholic education was reached in the early 1970s.  There were too few pupils and too many empty school desks.  Schools within the Catholic diocese of Arundel and Brighton were to be reorganised. The community took the hard decision to sell the major part of their land and buildings, including the chapel.  Their plan did not meet with approval from several parties.  Albert E.J. Benham may have been typical of the local lay Catholics.  In May 1972 he wrote to Bishop Bowen:

“… We are concerned first as Catholics because it is felt that the Sisters of Nevers do not appear to have been advised or persuaded to discuss with some of our lay organisations the possibility of putting these beautiful properties to a more Christian use or project for the good of the community.”

The Bishop had sympathies with both view and replied to Mr Benham:

Image courtesy of the Arundel and Brighton Diocesan Archive

Sister Mary-Columba Downey, an Irishwoman by birth, was the only nun to continue teaching under the new lay regime. Today, little remains of the nuns’ teaching heritage. The Archives from Nevers end with this rather sad comment:

La communauté se retire à Dyke Road, dans l’action de grâces pour le travail accompli. [The community withdrew to Dyke Road, with a service of thanksgiving for all the work completed.]

The community lived on

Information returned to the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton reveals that, by 1973, nine sisters had moved, as a temporary measure, to No. 289 Dyke Road, Brighton – a delightful late-1920s property with a garden.  Those who had taken up residence included Sister Mary Agnes (Effie) Hobbs (now aged 88) and Sister Mary Christine (Jillisen) Taylor. At 53, Sister Mary Christine was one of the younger members of the original Lourdes Convent community.  Sisters Elizabeth Alazet (74), Claire Lelong (64), and Thérèse Tanguy (36) were French.  The other four sisters were Irish.

In 1974, history repeated itself.  Regional Superior Sister Marie Michelle Kelly wrote from 289 Dyke Road, confirming to the Vicar General of the Arundel and Brighton diocese that the community wished to avail themselves of Bishop Michael’s permission “to form a community in St Mary’s Parish and another in St Joseph’s Parish, Brighton”.  A letter almost identical to those written in 1902 and 1903.

The project to move to St Joseph’s parish failed as the community had difficulty finding a suitable house and “difficulties in finding sufficient sisters.”  However, it was St Mary’s parish which provided the sisters with a “new” home.  In fact, they were back near Preston Park. Ten sisters moved into 44/46 Harrington Road in mid-1975 … and were living less than 300m away from St Bernadette’s junior school – the school which they had founded as part of Lourdes Convent.

Over the years the numbers at Harrington Road dwindled from ten to eight to seven and finally to five.  Two of the sisters later lived at 40 Cornwall Gardens. By 1999, Sr. (Jillsen) Taylor was in a nursing home where she died, aged 86 in 2003.

The sisters were still active.  An undated account (possibly from the very late 1980s) records: 

“ …The first Community, now in Harrington Road, Brighton, consists of five Sisters.  One had just given up regular teaching and now helps to serve meals to the homeless once a week, teaches English to immigrants and attends a prayer-meetings for the Handicapped once a month.  Two others are teaching part-time, one of whom works in an Oxfam shop twice a week.  One had worked with the SVP [St. Vincent de Paul Society] for twenty years before giving up teaching …”

The last official information relating to the community is contained in the annual “Questionnaire” from the Arundel and Brighton diocese of 2008.  The community consisted of just two nuns: Sister Margaret Mary Homan who was active in working with converts to Catholicism, at Birch Grove Nursing Home, at St Ann’s Day Centres and with “Churches Together” and Sister Theresa Downey who “is a member of two mediation groups, Also belongs to an ecumenical group.”

The end came in 2011, announced in this brief snippet from BBC Sussex on 19 April:

To follow shortly:  “Lourdes Convent, Withdean: Part 2 – the buildings”

My thanks

Religious sisters are not well documented outside their community.  I owe a great debt of gratitude to Sister Élisabeth de Tonquédec, Mother Superior of the Mother House of the Sisters of Charity of Nevers for granting access to documents from the Community. 

My thanks also to Madame Brigitte Rimbert of the Archives of the Sisters of Nevers for her patience in supplying documents and answering all my questions. I am most grateful to The Diocese of Brighton and Arundel for access to its archive and for the help of diocesan archivist Amy Mostert.

The Ozanam School – Compton Avenue

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I am not very interested in cars.  As I browsed through the dozens of postcards showing Brighton, I nearly passed this one by.

Old cars in front of an hotel
Image courtesy of Image: Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove

When I looked at the back of the postcard on-line, I found the following advertisement:

The wording of the advertisement reads: “English in England – Sea-bathing. Do you wish your child’s holidays to be both pleasant and useful? Enquire at the Ozanam School (Château d’Asnières – Department of the Seine) or at the Ozanam School (60 Compton Avenue, Brighton, England for details of an organized excursion next August.”

Read more: The Ozanam School – Compton Avenue

The ad continues by giving exact details of the journey to and from Paris.  The whole holiday would cost 285 francs.

My hunt was on to find out more about the Ozanam School in Brighton and its connections with France. The first challenge was to find the date of the postcard.

The picture on the card held a significant clue: the black crêpe seen below the hotel windows. There had been an important death.  It had to be either Queen Victoria (1901) or King Edward VII (1911).  I tried the latter one.  Saturday 20 May 1911 was the day of King Edward’s funeral.  It was also the day on which the Sussex Automobile Club held their sixth annual meeting at the Old Ship Hotel in Brighton. The photograph had been taken on that day.

I had never heard of an Ozanam School, but quickly learned that Frederick Ozanam (1813-1853) had been a Catholic teacher and writer who had founded the Society of St Vincent de Paul, a charity to help the poor.

18th century grand house behind a high wall and metal gates
ASNIÈRES – ÉCOLE OZANAN – ANCIEN CHÂTEAU Anciennes cartes postales, Public domaine, via Wikimedia Commons

The school in Asnières, however, seemed to be for the sons of the wealthy.  It was described as an école écclésiastique and was a private, incorporated company owned by a Monsieur Fillon.  The school had opened in about 1892 and went into liquidation soon after M. Fillon’s death in 1913.

The only other remaining traces of the Brighton school are a couple of advertisements in La Croix newspaper:

A French newspaper snipped about a French school in Brighton
Source: Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France. La Croix, 22 sept. 1915

To put the snippet into more standard French : Rentrée des classes.  Pendant la guerre, envoyez vos fils à Ozanam College, 60 Compton Avenue, Brighton, Angleterre.  Études de français, anglais, sports. Incomparable plage.  Traversée facile et sûre.  Écrivez au Supérieur. [Start of term. Send your sons to Ozanam College, 60 Compton Avenue, Brighton, England. Subjects: French, English, sport. Unrivalled beach.  The crossing is easy and safe.  Write to the Head Teacher.]

I first came across Abbé Lucien Vaucher when he was described in the Brighton Gazette (23 April 1913) as the “proprietor of a French School in Compton-avenue”. Kelly’s Directories of 1905, 1911 and 1913 state quite clearly that at the 60 Compton Avenue address was the “Ozanam French School  (Rev. Dr. P. A. Paris, Director)”.  I can find no trace of the Rev. Dr. Paris.  Lucien Vaucher made a much greater mark on society.

Priest though he was, Father Vaucher seemed to be somewhat of a hothead: in December 1912 he was fined “20/- (£1.00) and costs or 7 days’ imprisonment” for riding “a motor cycle recklessly” in York Place, Brighton.  He soon redeemed himself, however, by his service in the Great War.  From evidence in a book dedicated to clergy who had served at the time, Fr. Vaucher had “done  his bit” both for France and for Britain:

Newspaper snippet in French about Abbé Vaucher
Source: Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France. « Le clergé du diocèse de Nancy pendant la guerre 1914-1918 : Livre d’or » by l’abbé R. Hogard.

The text reads: Abbé Lucien Vaucher. Teacher of English. Ordained 1904; mobilised 2 August 1914.  Nurse in the 23rd Section. Nurse (August 1914 – April 1916). Interpreter attached to the British Army (August 1916 – March 1919). Somme, Belgium.

But there was more.  Much more.  And I learned about it from The Iowa Falls Gazette.  In 1916, a correspondent of the Gazette by the name of Verne Marshall, filed an extensive report on his visit to the Hôpital Gama in the town of Toul.  The battles of Verdun, 50 miles away, had only just begun but the author writes of the hundreds of injured soldiers which were already being cared for in the hospital. In the last few paragraphs of his article, Marshall wanted to lighten the tone.  He describes a concert he attended. The piece ends with these lines:

“Afterwards we went across the road and attended a tea party at which Lucien Vaucher, priest, soldier, professor, scholar – and postmaster pro tem at the l’hospital [sic] Gama, was the host. … It was a very pleasant affair, and Vaucher, who is a man amongst men, proved himself a prince of good fellows in addition of his other numerous qualifications.”

Fr. Vaucher returned to ecclesiastical life in his home town of Nancy where became an honorary chaplain at the Cathedral and taught in a local boys’ school.  He did not live to see another world war: he died in February 1939 aged just 51 years old.

The 1911 census was taken on Sunday 2 April.  It would appear, therefore, that the 12 boy pupils at the Brighton school were not there just for their summer holiday.  They were in Brighton for at least a year, purportedly to learn English.  However, both teachers, 35 year-old Michel de Rivière and a younger man, Maurice Richard (24), were French nationals. The likelihood is that teaching was very largely in French.

Despite the Ozanam principals of helping the poor, it would seem that this school catered mainly for the wealthy.  It was not only the principal teacher who had the aristocratic particule ‘de’ attached to his name.  As ever, it has been easier to trace the careers of the nobility (or ‘nobs’) than those of more humble folk.

Of the 12 pupils present on that April day in 1911, three were from aristocratic families.

The oldest was René d’Estainville, aged 20.   In later years, he worked as an agent for the Lanson champagne company, and on his marriage certificate, in 1930, described himself as commerçant [merchant].  He could just as well have put ‘playboy’.  That 1930 marriage was to Rita Redhead, an actress.  Their wedding was a grand event in Paris with Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail, in attendance.  Why was the newspaper mogul there? Partly because the bride was cousin to his daughter-in-law.  Partly because Rita had previously been his Lordship’s mistress for several years – a truly May to December affair, Rothermere being 30 years older than Miss Redhead.  Rita, however, was managing to move from one titled partner to another: by the time René and Rita married, the groom was comte [Count] René d’Estainville.

René d’Estainville was a sportsman.  Described as “the well-known sportsman and ‘bobber’ ” in The Sketch newspaper (August 1931) he was renowned for his skill at bobsleighing at St Moritz in winter.  But perhaps marriage suited René.  When journalist Priscilla mentioned the d’Estainvilles in The Tatler later the same year, she says of him in an aside “(René does not seem to be quite the lad he used-to-was in his gay bat’chlor days does he?)”.

The couple, who had two daughters and a son, stayed together until René died in February 1977.

But perhaps it is unfair to stress the frivolous side of René d’Estainville’s life.  In the Great War he had been a captain in the N77 Squadron and in July 1917 had, with his co-pilot, brought down an enemy ‘plane following a dogfight above one of the many forests in eastern France.  For his exploits he had won the Croix de Guerre, awarded  pour conduite exceptionnelle [for outstanding conduct].

The second aristocrat was recorded in the census simply as Jean de Maillé.  Presumably the enumerator did not have room to write in full Arthur Jean Foulque Marie de Maillé de la Tour Landry. There is little to tell of Jean. He volunteered to join the army in 1917, just three weeks before his 18th birthday. He trained as a pilot, starting in March 1917 rising through the ranks to become brigadier and then quartermaster.  He died on 28 August 1918 at a military hospital within the grounds of the Château of Versailles.  As his older brother had died 10 months earlier in one of the Rumanian campaigns, Jean would, in later life, have also been a count – after all, his grandfather was a duke. It was not to be.

Third in age was Jehan Cuny d’Azerailles (aged 13 in 1911).  There is no doubt that Jehan was illegitimate, although acknowledged by his father.  The puzzle is the aristocratic name: Cuny d’Azerailles does not appear in newspapers or official records. The use of the name may have been snobbery on the mother’s part or simply an indication that she wished to compensate for her son’s illegitimacy by using such a grand patronym.  My research indicates that it is highly likely that the well-know sportsman and champion tennis player of the 1930s was the same person as the little boy who had received part of his education in Brighton.

Youngest in the class was 12 year old Bernard Maridort.  Too young to serve for long toward the end of WW1, Bernard survived and spent many of the interwar years as a colonialist in Gabon.  Once France had been occupied in 1940, he was prompt to leave Gabon to join the Free French Forces in Brazzaville (Congo).  Bernard was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1949 for his management of colonial forestry in West Africa. He probably retired soon after, but lived a good few more years.  Bernard Maurice Roger Maridort died aged 77 in the quiet town of Tours on the peaceful banks of the Loire river.

As far as I can tell, the Ozanam school in Compton Avenue did not survive beyond 1915. Many of the parents may have recalled their boys to France in 1914, leaving Lucien Vachier (or Father Paris) in a difficult financial position.  However, I feel it is more likely that Fr Vacher himself felt the call of duty.  It was more important for him to close the school and join up than to continue his Brighton (ad)venture.

John Tilt and his royal patrons

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This little snippet, found by chance on-line, whetted my appetite.  I had to find out more about Jean or John Tilt, a Brighton lad, and his connection to France:

No. 425- By Order of the King who authorises John Tilt esq, born 28 September 1783 at Brighton in England, to make his domicile in France and there to enjoy the exercise of his civil rights for as long as he shall continue to reside there. (Paris, 12 November 1826) Source BnF/Gallica

Why would Charles X extend such hospitality to an Englishman?  And why, seven years later, would Louis-Philippe, King of the French, allow a pension of 1,000 francs to the same man? Tilt (Jean) was listed as a minster of the Anglican Church who had lost his fortune, that is to say, he had lost his ecclesiastical living.  Not the usual beneficiary of a Catholic king’s bounty.

Read more: John Tilt and his royal patrons

Source BnF/Gallica

I’ll start by going back a generation.

Thomas Tilt, John’s father, was a native of Kidderminster. He arrived in Brighton in 1776.  In their mid-20s, he and his wife Mary already had three sons, four more children would be born in Brighton.  Thomas soon took over the running of the Castle Inn which stood on the Old Steine at the heart of Brighton. So very conveniently near the Marine (later Royal) Pavilion.  So far so English.  So far so Anglican.

The Castle Inn in 1801, the large building centre left of the engraving.  Image courtesy of the Society of Brighton Print Collectors / Regency Society of Brighton and Hove

All William and Mary’s sons seem to have had a good education. Of the Tilt brood, the eldest son William, born in 1773, was educated at Lewes Grammar School, then Eton and finally Trinity College, Cambridge.  He became an Anglican clergyman.

Second son Thomas followed in his father’s footsteps by renting out accommodation for visitors to the burgeoning tourist town that Brighton was becoming. The fourth child, Andrew, became a colonel in the army, serving in France, the West Indies and Canada.  Of the two girls, little is known: Sarah died aged 13, although Mary outlived them all.  She died in 1863, her 80th year.

Born in 1783, John / Jean Tilt was the couple’s the sixth child and fifth son.  He does not seem to have been physically adventurous like Andrew.  Nor was he conventional like brother William.  Nor was he a businessman like Thomas jnr. John was, however, perhaps the most interesting of the bunch.

John seemed restless.  He made a start on a career by becoming a schoolmaster in Southwick, near Brighton but in an advert he placed in the London Courrier and Evening Gazette, he tells prospective clients that he has “been several years in France”.  Later reports suggest that his stay of “several years” may not have been voluntary.  If it can be assumed that he went to France aged about 20, he would have found himself trapped in an enemy country.  Napoleon declared war against Britain in 1803.

Back in England, two major events happened in John’s life in 1809: he married Elizabeth Gates and he moved his school from Southwick to Bedford Square, at “the Western extremity of Brighton”. Not surprisingly, John’s school specialized in languages: “Latin, Greek, French and lastly Hebrew” (Sussex Advertiser  12 July 1819).  He also turned his hand to writing school books.  His first publication was rather expensive (at 5 shillings).  It advertised itself as:

Three sons were born to John and Elizabeth between 1813 and 1817. Less than two years after the birth of his youngest child, John decided that school-mastering was not for him, so he enrolled at St Alban Hall, an Oxford college.  Aged 34 and with three children under the age of seven, John Tilt became a clergyman – although it would appear he never attended lectures and maybe never set foot in “his” college.

John was now a fully fledged Reverend. The title Rev. may well have improved sales of his books.

Morning Post, Thursday 20 January 1820 ©The British Library Board

In 1823, he was given the curacy at All Hallows Church, Lombard Street in London.  Perhaps now was the time to settle down.  Instead, he found Catholicism – five years before the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829.  It was an audacious move.  The story is told in detail by La Quotidienne on 12 December 1824.  Here are the bare bones of the story as told by the newspaper:

One day, John Tilt, a good Anglican, heard that a Catholic priest, Prince Alex de Hohenlohe, had recently cured two nuns in Ireland of an unspecified illness.  This he had achieved through the medium of prayer, and remotely, from his monastery in Germany.  Tilt was initially skeptical of what the Catholic church considered miraculous.  First, he examined in detail this particular miracle.  Then he set about delving into the phenomenon in general.  When he learned that each century had famous examples of miracles, he came to the conclusion that l’église à laquelle il était attaché n’était point la vraie Église. [The Church to which he was attached was not the true Church.]

After long discussions with eminent Catholics he made up his mind et fit son abjuration, le 29 juillet [he abjured on 29 July] in the chapel of St Mary’s, Moorfields in the City of London. His wife followed his example, despite also being an Anglican born and bred.

The newspaper was not slow to recognize that the couple had children and, henceforth, no income. This, it stated, would be a problem, but the Tilts were strong in their belief.  The couple were confirmed in their new faith by no less a person than William Poynter, who the newspaper called, inaccurately, Bishop of London.

Whether Elizabeth Tilt spoke French is not clear.  No matter! The family (John?) decided that Catholic France was a better place to live than their home country.  Almost immediately on his arrival in France, John was given a post as a senior librarian in the Sorbonne.  The Étoile newspaper reveals that the Ministre des affaires ecclésiastiques et de l’instruction publique [Minister for Church Affairs and Public Education] who appointed John Tilt was doing so, not out of charity but because

M. Tilt est un homme instruit, en état de rendre des services à l’église dans l’étude des langues anciennes et des matières de controverse. [Mr Tilt is an educated man and is in a position to be of service to the Church through his studies of ancient languages and polemics.]

Somewhat later, English newspapers told the story differently – and rather more pithily:

A jesuit (sic) got hold of him, and he being a man of unstable mind, perverted him to the Catholic faith.  He renounced Protestantism, and fled to Paris where he had the enviable distinction of being pointed out [appointed?] sub-librarian to some Bibliotheque there … and betook himself to the sophistry of Catholicism, which was more congenial to his elastic conscience and utter destitution of principle … The Age Sunday 07 February 1830

Strong words indeed. 

Perhaps John Tilt was not a good librarian.  The family’s affairs do not seem to have gone well. There is nothing to show when or why he left the Sorbonne, but in 1833, King Louis-Philippe was persuaded that the family needed financial support.  The King stepped in and awarded Jean Tilt a pension of 1,000 francs.

A series of letters in the Cambridgeshire archive reveal the extent to which Richard Huddleson, a wealthy Catholic of Sawston Hall near Cambridge, also supported the family financially.

This help appears to have started in 1837 as the result of an appeal sent to Huddelston from a friend of his, Kenelm Digby.  Tilt and Digby lived in the same street in the centre of Paris. Digby had been moved by the plight of the family.  He wrote to Huddleston and Huddleston must have sent funds immediately, for within three weeks Tilt had written his thanks to his benefactor in a letter dated 19 November 1837 from N0 48 rue de Grenelle. 

Alas, the situation did not improve for the family.  By 1841 matters had gone from bad to worse: Digby was asking for Huddleston’s help once again.

The family to whom you were so generous last year is reduced low indeed.  The father for some days was near losing his reason.  Absolute starvation was near being their end.  Mr Hunt is voucher for their honesty.  We are going to get one son apprenticed and to pay £30 for him.  £20 is wanting.  We are going to place one daughter in a convent school to get her education perfected… Young Tilt who was near dying of hunger in Paris last winter has just had an offer through us of being a Partner to a Surgeon apothecary of Southampton.  I have not yet received his answer to say whether he will be tempted by it to abandon his dear old Father and Mother in Paris. (Letter dated 27 August 1841 from Springfield House, Polygon, Southampton)

Two years later, John Tilt was dead leaving his wife, yet again, to rely on the charity of Richard Huddlestone.

…  Poor Mrs Tilt is residing with her son, the Doctor.  Their address is No 11 rue de la Paix. I shall say nothing to her about your last letter. & indeed I shall not probably see her, but as I have given you her address, I shall not have to reproach myself for your alms will be grateful to her.  Her own recovery is considered miraculous.  She is respected by all who know her and she has to struggle with poverty with her son. (Letter dated 6 June 1843 from Digby to Huddleston)

“Poor Mrs Tilt” may, in fact, have had a better life following the death of her husband.  Her three boys had been brought up in France and each was in a position to support her in her old age.

Postscript

John Tilt’s eldest son became a Catholic priest.  When he died, aged just 47, in 1859 he had spent several years as Missionary Rector of the fledgling St Mary’s Catholic Chapel in Richmond as well as undertaking “religious instruction” of the pupils at St Mary’s Collegiate Catholic School.  When he had had to retire through ill health in 1859 his congregation gave him 105 guineas, much of the money coming from “the munificent donation of the French Royal Family at Claremont and Twickenham” – that is, the deposed Orléans family who had fled France after the 1848 revolution.

Second son, Edward John, graduated as a doctor in Paris in 1829.  He returned to England and became eminent in the realm of women’s health.  He had brough with him from France enlightened ideas about the menopause and gynaecology in general.  He did not die until 1893, at which time the British Medical Journal gave him a 20-line obituary and he appears at some length in the Dictionary of National Biography.

Third son, William Henry (aka Henri) Gates Tilt is more of a mystery. He lived most of his life in England and seemed to have private means from property.  His links with France, and in particular with the town of Rennes in Britanny, remained strong: two of his daughters were born in Rennes in the late 1850s; one of his twin sons married a woman who had been born and, much later, died in that same town; the other son married a woman from Saint-Brieux, just 60 miles from Rennes. 

The Limes Convent School 1902-1916

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Writing this postcard to a pupil at a prestigious boys’ Catholic school in western France, Marie explains the layout of her school.

Postcard supplied by Anthony Beeson,  See also “North Brighton through Time” by A Beeston

Cher Gratien, je t’envoie ma pension.  Où je te mets une + c’est notre classe, une X c’est la réfectoire, ++ notre dortoir.  Merci pour la carte.  Il fait un temps magnifique depuis quelques jours. J’ai eu la visite de René samedi, il va très bien et te souhaite … bonjour. [Dear Gratien, I’m sending you our boarding school.  Our classroom is where I have put a + for you, an X is for the refectory, ++ our dormitory.  Thank you for the card.  The weather has been magnificent for the last few days.  René visited on Saturday, he’s very well and says “hello”.]

The writer was French but was clearly was at ease in writing in English.  She was resident in no ordinary English ladies’ school.  No 157 Preston Road, opposite Preston Park in Brighton, was a convent school run by French nuns.  The 1911 census shows that 10 of the 11 nuns teaching at the school had been born in France, as had all 15 pupils.  Even the 15 year old servant, Anna Pescher, was a French national.

Read more: The Limes Convent School 1902-1916

For the first few years of the 20th century, French politics had a considerable impact on girls’ education in Brighton.

In 1901, la loi des associations was passed by a Republican government.  On the surface, this law seemed very positive:  for the first time since the revolution in 1789, groups of more than 20 people could gather together legally to pursue their own interests (occasionally subversive, of course).  Nowadays, this law is used to help voluntary groups run their activities.

However, at the time the law came into force, there was continuing suspicion of religious groups.  The 1901 law was seen as a way of curbing their hold over young minds.  One of the many new rules stipulated that associations which had an “earned income” (usually from teaching, in the case of nuns) would now be taxed on the value of their, often very extensive, lands and properties.  Owning property therefore became prohibitively expensive for religious communities.

Most congregations, such as that of les Sœurs de la Providence de Portieux (Sisters of Providence of Portieux), ploughed their income from their fee-paying students into schools for the poor in the same neighbourhood, or into other charitable activities. This did not allay the government’s suspicion of them.  By 1904 many congregations, both male and female, had delegated their teaching sisters to set up convents, and particularly convent schools, abroad. Sussex and Kent were at the forefront of welcoming them.  Brighton and Hove in particular.

The Community of the Sisters of Providence of Portieux had been founded in the Vosges region (north-east) of France in 1762.  As a religious order, they had flourished, surviving the French Revolution, Napoleon and the Franco-Prussian War (1870).  The Law of Association in 1901 lead to hundreds of the sister leaving the dozens of schools they had founded across France.  In the Paris region alone, seven schools were shut and the nuns dismissed. 

 La Libre Parole 26 July 1902 Source: BnF Gallica

[The school premises was closed last Tuesday.  More than 1,240 Sisters of Providence have already returned to the mother-house in Portieux (Vosges).  This congregation has no communal assets and its income is used exclusively in helping the unfortunate.]

Not all French people wanted to see nuns ousted from their teaching post as reported by The Sphere, Saturday 2 August 1902 Image © Illustrated London News Group. Image created courtesy of The British Library Board.

When a group of refugee Sisters of Providence arrived in Brighton, they were able to settle in The Limes in Preston Road. At The Limes they set about establishing a school. 

The Limes c. 1960 Image courtesy of the Regency Society of Brighton and Hove

The Limes had been built in 1878.  It was a large, detached house, symmetrical in plan and had four floors, including a basement. It was not the largest of the houses along Preston Road, but it had the advantage of having a coach-house and a two-storey cottage in the grounds.  The park opposite was well patrolled by members of the local police force as well as its formidable but watchful park keeper. It was a suitable place for young ladies to walk and take exercise. 

The Limes was used as a comfortable family home for the final 20 years of the 19th century. The last private owner was John Salkeld Horsley.  Horsley ran a cycle shop at 4 Pool Valley.  As cycling became a popular and affordable pastime – even for ladies – Horsely made enough money to move both his shop and his home to 75 Grand Parade in about 1902 or 1903.  The Limes became available.  To let or to buy is not known.  The Sisters of Portieux were able to acquire the property and set up their convent and school.

Little is known of the pupils:  The card below was sent on 18 May 1907 by the three Parazols sisters, Léontine (aged 11), Adeline (10) and Raymonde (a few days before her sixth birthday).  The desire of many Catholic parents to keep their girls in a convent school is perhaps exemplified, if rather to an extreme, by the Parazols family.  M. and Mme Parazols had sent their three girls away to England at a time when the family was already mourning the loss of four babies who had died in the five years between 1899 and 1900.  Each had died either at birth or within a few weeks of birth.

Post card from the personal collection of the Suzanne Hinton

Raymonde Parazols was not the only “tiny” in the school.  Both Adrien Lenfant and Jean Rozière, the only two boys in the school, were aged just eight years old when they appear in the 1911 census for the school.

Adeline Parazols died in France, apparently homeless, aged 34; Raymonde married in France; Adrien and Jean would have been too young to serve in WW1.  Reliable sources show that Adrien lived to the age of 87, dying in 1990 in France.

Extensive searches for information about the nuns or about the other pupils has been unfruitful.

The school had vanished from Preston Road by 1916.  Perhaps it was no longer needed by the Sisters of Providence.  A convent school run by a similar community had been flourishing in Bexhill since 1898. Many French parents would be glad that their daughters were out of harm’s way in England during the fighting on French soil in WW1 – but would also feel it prudent to ensure that the girls were further inland, far from any threat of attack or even invasion.

The Limes was subsequently used as a residence for a Ministry of Labour (re)training centre.  In 1921, the house and outbuilding were home to about 30 men, mostly in their 20s and early 30s and mostly handicapped following their war injuries.  The atmosphere must have been very different from the sedate young ladies’ school of just a very few year previously.

J.E.C Bodley, spur to the Entente Cordiale?

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John Edward Courtenay Bodley moved into 24 Brunswick Terrace, Hove in 1904.   He must have liked Hove.  Within two years he had moved just 400 yards west, to 2 Adelaide Mansions, also on the seafront.

Oscar Wilde and JECBodley in 1875: Image from ‘Oscar Wilde’, by Richard Ellmann (1987)., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Read more: J.E.C Bodley, spur to the Entente Cordiale?

By the time of his arrival in Hove, J. E. C. Bodley was  50 years old and a highly respected writer on France. When he died, exactly 100 years ago, on the 28th May 1925 the London Times said of him:

His magnum opus was his two volumed work on France, which in many ways paved the way for the sympathies necessary to the Entente [Cordiale of 1904], for he wrote at a time of great hostilities between the countries.

The first edition of the magnum opus in question had been published in 1898.   Since 1890 he had immersed himself in the politics, cultures and institutions of France.

So keen was his desire to get to know France that he explains in Part II of the introduction to the book:

I came to France in May 1890 and wrote the last lines of these volumes more than seven years later, having in the interval not spent seven weeks away from French soil.

We must remember that in the 1890s, following the Franco-Prussian war, Alsace and Lorraine had been lost to Germany and that Algeria was an integral part of France – not a colony but a fully fledged département.

Despite having started his professional career as a barrister, Bodley had already made friends in high places in France before 1890.  We could almost accuse him of name dropping when he lists such grandees of French literature and politics as Ernest Renan, Hyppolite Taine and Georges Clemenceau amongst his friends and acquaintances.

Bodley’s must have been pretty resilient physically.  In 1891 alone he lists staying in 16 different towns during his round-France travels – but then he was only in his late 30s and presumably quite fit.

1891 was to change his life.

After passing some months in Paris I set out again in 1891 returning to Lyons [sic] … Thence I went to Marseilles and stayed long enough to get a certain insight into the life of the composite population. Crossing to Algeria, during a long visit I was able to examine the peculiar system of administration … After a brief summer season in Paris, we …

“I” has changed to “we”.  In May 1891, 37 year old Bodley married Evelyn Frances Bell at Algiers “in the Republic of France” as it says on the marriage certificate.  The bride was just 21 years old. She was the daughter of a wealthy iron founder from Middlesborough.  Her family regularly spent the winter in Algiers and her father eventually became the British Consul General of that city.

The newspaper, Le Temps, makes a very revealing, perhaps very Gallic, comment on why this marriage might have taken place:

M. Bodley avait, jusqu’alors, voyagé seul. Cette solitude nuisait à son enquête, parce que un célibataire étranger n’est point admis facilement dans l’intimité de nos demeures, et que les familles françaises – même celles où il y a des jeunes filles à marier – sont entourées par un amoncellement de fortifications qu’on ne peut pas renverser si l’on n’est pas aidé, dans cet assaut, par une frêle main de femme. [Up to that point, Mr Bodley had travelled alone. His single state was hindering his research, for an unmarried foreigner is not easily admitted into our homes and French families – even those with marriageable daughters – are surrounded by many a battlement which cannot be overrun without the help of a wife’s delicate hand.]

Once wed, the Bodleys criss-crossed France as Bodley had done before their marriage. Following another summer break in Paris, the couple visited Le Mans, Angers, Vannes, the Morbihan region, Nantes, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, “several Pyrenean towns”, Lourdes, Carcassonne, Toulouse, Limoges. “Then we drove through George Sand’s country, lingering in many a forgotten town and village in the Creuse and the Indre”.

The word “drove” presents a conundrum.  Motor cars were in their very earliest days and unreliable on long journeys.  One of the Bodleys’ journeys was made by river, down the Rhone valley.  Le Temps, on 21 July 1901, maintained that M. Bodley se servit de nos chemins de fer, choisissant volontiers les trains omnibus qui déposent, en des localités peu connues, les voyageurs curieux.  [Mr Bodley readily uses our railways, choosing slow trains which leave the inquisitive traveller in little-known places.]  Bodley was known to dislike modern roads “filled with automobiles” (in the 1890s!).   I’m sure that any train journey they made would have been in a first class carriage.

With wonderful masculine understatement, Bodley continues: “The circumstances of my life now made prolonged journeys somewhat difficult.”  This was an oblique reference to the fact that Evelyn had given birth, in Paris, to their first child, Ronald, on 3 March 1892.  The travels did not stop.  The couple’s second son Josselin was born 17 months later at Vaux in the Hautes-Alpes.

The list of the Bodleys’ travels over the next two years makes exhausting reading.  However, by 1896 the couple had settled briefly in the chateau of Sucy-en-Brie, just 11 miles south-east of Paris.  It was in the chateau that their third child, Yveline Courtney Bodley was born.

Birth certificate of Yveline Bodley 1895. Transcript below.

Du treize décembre mil huit cent quatre vingt quinze, à midi, Acte de naissance de Bodley Yveline Courtenay du sexe féminin, née hier, douze, à dix heures dix minutes du soir au château de Sucy, domicile de ses père et mère, en cette Commune, fille légitime de Bodley John Edward Courtenay, sans profession, âgé de quarante deux ans, et de Bell Evelyn Frances, son épouse, sans profession, âgée de vingt six ans, tous deux demeurant au château de Sucy en cette Commune. Les témoins  ont été …  [On 13th December 1895, at midday, birth certificate of Bodley Yveline Courtenay (sic), girl, born yesterday, 12th at 6.10 in the evening at the chateau of Sucy, residence of her father and mother, in this district, legitimate daughter of Bodley John Edward Courtenay, of no profession, aged 42 and of Bell Evelyn Frances, his wife, of no profession, aged 26, both residing at the chateau of Sucy in this district.  The witnesses were …]

As with most of their temporary homes, the couple were renting – in this case from Henry Bruce Meux, heir to the English Meux brewing company.  Meux had inherited the chateau from his aristocratic mother, but never lived in it.

Le château de Sucy-en-Brie Image: Chabe01, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;

When living in Sucy, Bodley was proud to reveal that “Ludovic Halévy … was my neighbour for two pleasant summers.”

Plan of Sucy-en-Brie. Image: Roland45, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons (Adapted)

Ludovic Halévy was famed as the joint librettist for most of Offenbach’s operettas and of Bizet’s Carmen.  He lived just a few yards from the chateau in a vast house called Haute Maison. Writing to his cousin, Bizet’s widow, in late August 1895, Halévy gives us a glimpse of Eveline Bodley just a few months before she gave birth to her daughter:

Sucy est plus calme , et peut-être, je crois, trop calme à notre jolie voisine, Madame Bodley. Elle a été fort surprise quand Louise lui a dit que tout dormait vers dix heures du soir … [Sucy is quieter, and perhaps, I think, too quiet for our pretty neighbour, Mrs Bodley.  She was very surprised when Louise told her that everyone was in bed by about ten in the evening …]

This portrait of Madame Bodley by Léon Bonnat  hung in the salon of the chateau in Sucy-en-Brie.

Portrait of Madame Bodely
Léon Bonnat, “Portrait d’Evelyn Frances Bodley”, 1895 (huile sur toile / H. 81,6 cm ; l. 65,4 cm / numéro d’inventaire : CM 859 / © Bayonne, musée Bonnat-Helleu / cliché A. Vaquero)

From late 1900 until 1904, the couple spent most of their time at the Château Bellefontaine in Biarritz, where on one notable occasion in April 1902, according to the New York Herald “the King honoured Mr Bodley, the author of ‘France’ and Mrs Bodley with his company at breakfast on Sunday.”  This may well have been the day on which Edward VII, as yet uncrowned, asked Bodley to write The Coronation of Edward the Seventh: A Chapter of European and Imperial History (published  in 1903)

Château Bellefontaine, Biarritz. Built in 1880. Image: Remi.touja Creative Commons 4.0

There are no clues to the circumstances which brought Bodley to Hove in 1904.  This was a turbulent time in his life.  His fourth child had died, aged just 2, that September while the couple were staying at the Château Bellefontaine; in the same year, Bodley and his wife sought, acrimoniously, a divorce which was not granted.  The couple separated and by 1908, they had managed to divorce.  Their 15 year old daughter seems to have sided with her father.  The 1911 census lists Alix Yveline Ava Courtney Bodley as living at 2 Adelaide Mansions with her father and two servants.

La Folie Boulart, formerly Château Bellefontaine, now a private hotel. The house at Adelaide Mansions was extremely modest by comparison. © La Folie Boulart / M. Pierre Delalonde

2 Adelaide Mansions was advertised for sale by Maple and Co. in 1903.  It is possible that Bodley bought the house at this time, or perhaps he rented it from the purchaser.  Either way, it was a stunning property:

… the exceedingly attractive and commanding MARINE MANSION, known as 2 ADELAIDE MANSIONS, HOVE, replete with every comfort and upon which large amounts have been lavishly expended on the internal appointments and decorations which are of a most handsome and costly description. The Mansion occupies a very choice position, directly facing the sea, in the most fashionable part of Hove, opposite the private lawns to which there is right of access, is of imposing elevation and in perfect order.  It contains 11 bedrooms, large bathroom with tiled walls and floor, and Roman bath (hot and cold), and sea water supplies, wide stone staircase and secondary ditto, exceedingly elegant drawing room, 48ft. 2in. by 24ft., handsome oak-panelled dining room, 27ft. 4in. by 17ft. 7in., morning room, smoking room, very pretty winter garden,… vestibule entrance hall, lavatory, kitchen, butler’s pantry and bed room, servants’ hall and usual offices, dinner lift, electric light, gas, electric bells and speaking tubes are fitted to the mansion.

Adelaide Mansions are numbered 1 to 4 from right to left.

Why would Bodley want to live in such a large house?    Firstly, he was used to living in chateaux, staying in embassies and occupying other grand residences.  Compared to his homes in Sucy-en-Brie and in Biarritz, he was downsizing.  Secondly, it is possible that, having been a guest in so many notable French homes, he was obliged to do a great deal of reciprocal entertaining.  Alix Bodley, later Viscountess Waverly, became a society hostess admired, amongst many others, by Winston Churchill. Her skills may have been honed in Adelaide Mansions.

During his time in Hove, Bodley continued writing: 20,000 words on France for the 10th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; numerous introductions to books by other writers; a two-part lecture on “The Church in France” given to the Royal Institution in 1906; L’Age Mécanique et le Déclin de l’idéalisme en France  (published in 1913) and much, much more.  Soon after the end of WW1, at about the time he left Hove, Bodley published the curiously titled “The Romance of the Battle-Line in France”.

The aim of the book was worthy.  Soldiers who had fought and suffered in France might come to be curious about the places in which they had suffered.  Those who had lost friends and family might want to know more about the place in which their loved ones had died. To some extent, Bodley was cashing in on nostalgia.

Bodley continued to live in Adelaide Mansions until about 1919.  His daughter, now known as Ava, married in February 1925, exactly three months before her father’s death… and four years after her father had married Phyllis Helen Lomax who was some 30 years Bodley’s junior.

Bodley did not live to know the grief of losing his own two youngest sons by his marriage to Phyllis: both men were in their early twenties, both were killed within six weeks of each other in 1944, John in Italy, Thomas in Belgium.  Their mother  lived until 1968 in Cuckfield, Sussex,  where her husband, John Edward Courtney Bodley, had died 43 years earlier.

Not all sweetness and light (2)

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“Ah, well, there’s one good thing,” continued Sukie, rubbing the tea-caddy with her apron, “stranger he is, but he’s not one of them nasty French critturs.”

Sukie was a maid-of-all work depicted in a fictionalised account of the Hine family. The account represents the attitudes toward France during much of the early to mid-nineteenth century.

Sukie watched over by her master, Mr Hine. Illustration by Lucy Kemp-Welch from “Round About a Brighton Coach Office” by Maude Egerton King. Published 1896
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Brighton seen by the French – 1878

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In January1878, the Journal Amusant could not resist having a little fun at the expense of Brighton. Our town was, after all, a serious rival to Le Touquet (or Paris-Plage as the French know it).

First to draw the attention of Mars, the illustrator, was the entertainment on the West Pier.

THE PERFORMING FLEAS ON THE WEST PIER – The caption reads: My poor performing fleas have disappeared! Everyone here! Search yourselves!
All images are from Le Journal Amusant, 3 January 1878. Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France

Courtesy of Signor Ubini, performing fleas appeared for many a summer season of the 1870s on the West Pier.

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French Cinema in Brighton (6) : North Road

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By the mid-1970s, the Continentale cinema had stopped showing French films.  BBC television had  started showing them from the mid-1950s.  Jean Renoir’s ‘French Can Can’ was shown on the single-channel BBC almost as soon as it was released in 1955.  Who would show French films to a Brighton audience in Brighton?

The cinema at 64 North Street would.  Originally opened in 1911 as the Bijou Electric Empire, the tiny 400-seater cinema at the heart of Brighton’s shopping area evolved over the years.

Image Courtesy of Mike Blakemore via Creative Commons
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Chargois et Burluraux à Brighton

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I don’t know whether Pierre Chargois and Jean Nicolas Burluraux left Rupt-en-Woëvre in north-east France together in 1850, or even if they left at much the same time. They were both in their mid-twenties. Their small home town had a population of just 665. They may well have been related. The population was slowly declining and the two young men were part of that decline. The movement away from the countryside to the towns had begun. Pierre and Jean Nicolas had decided that they would go further than the nearest big town, Verdun.

Pierre’s father, Richard, was a merchant and had already crossed the Channel with his merchant father, Jean who was a frequent visitor to England. The two young men would sell high quality basket ware. It is likely that Jean Nicloas was a skilled basket weaver as one of the main crops in the very water-rich Rupt valley was osier or willow cane.

Osier Cutting by H. R. Robertson. Source: Life on the Upper Thames. Credit: the University of Toronto and the Internet Archive https://victorianweb.org/history/work/22.html

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The marquis de Conflans and a pub in Hove

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When you next pass The Poets’ Corner pub in Montgomery Road, Hove, look up. At roof level you will see two effigies of racehorses. The one below is Eclipse.

The Poets' Corner pub and Eclipse

Eclipse was one of the greatest horses of the latter years of the 18th century, both as a racer and at stud. He started his racing career aged five in 1769, but was retired young, after a mere 18 races, because not only was he undefeated, but he won his races by such a large margin that no other owners would enter their horses against him. The only time he won a race in Sussex was at the Lewes course in July 1769.

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