Places

Lourdes Convent – The Buildings

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On 29 July 1904, five French nuns belonging to the order of Les Sœurs de l’Instruction de la Charité de Nevers (see “Lourdes Convent, Withdean: The People    arrived at St John’s, a large house set back on the east side of Patcham Road in Brighton.  The property had a huge garden.  This garden had been the pride and joy of Mr Rapley, gardener to the previous owner, Miss Visick. Mr Rapley had won many a prize in local horticultural shows, his flower displays earning particular praise.

The house was on land which sloped up from the main road running north out of Brighton toward London.  To the south of the property, just over a mile away, was the sea.  On the opposite side of the valley, to the west, was Preston Park Station, just a five minute walk away.

1909 map reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Scotland (CC-BY).  Preston Park Station circled in red

Read more: Lourdes Convent – The Buildings

Below is the convent’s first letterhead dated October 1904.  This is supposed to be a view from the west.  The picture bears little relationship to reality: the train line should be behind the viewer; the sea should be away to the right.

© Sœurs de la Charité de Nevers, Archives de Saint-Gildard / Nevers

What did exist by 1904 was the house and its veranda, the beginnings of the grotto, at least one gardener’s cottage in the grounds and possibly a small wooden chapel.  The imposing chapel in the left foreground had not yet been built.  The image is a wonderful pipe dream of the founding sisters, as Sister Marie-Stanislas, freely admitted in a letter dated 17 October 1904:

“L’en-tête de ma lettre vous donnera un aperçu de notre couvent plus ou moins idéal ; la grotte est en espérance et la chapelle [est] pour le coup d’œil » [This letterhead will give you, more or les, an impression of our ideal convent; we are in hopes of building the grotto, and the chapel shows what we would like.]

The south façade of St John’s with the veranda facing west, toward Preston Road.  Undated. Photograph supplied by Step Back in Time, Queens Road, Brighton

The highlight of that winter of 1906 was the completion of the Lourdes Grotto.  The grotto still stands in the grounds of St Bernadette’s School.

Photo ©  Mrs P. Phillimore 2025, courtesy of St. Bernadette’s School, Brighton

Below is a photo showing much the same view nearly 100 yeas ago.  The school uniforms have changed far more than the grotto itself.

© Sœurs de la Charité de Nevers, Archives de Saint-Gildard / Nevers

The school was successful. It started to outgrow its classroom and playground capacity.  The owner of the house immediately to the north, Woodslee with its 3½ acre garden, had put his property up for sale in 1905 but it had been bought by Mayor of Brighton, Bruce Morison.  Alas, the purchase may have overstretched the mayor’s finances: in the next year or so he became bankrupt.  By 1913, Woodslee was on the market again. This proved the opportunity the nuns needed: the community was able to rent Woodslee which they renamed Massabielle, after the Lourdes grotto in which St. Bernadette experienced her first apparition of the Virgin Mary.

The years of WWI did not have a great impact on Brighton.  Wounded soldiers were tended in schools and in local hospitals.  In their elegant homes and gardens, middle- and upper-class ladies of Brighton and Hove put on entertainment for the maimed and injured.  Visitors and residents continued to dance and dine at the large hotels.  And the number of pupils at Lourdes Convent rose from 39 in 1912 to 75 in 1919.  Two years later, the statue of the Virgin finally arrived in Withdean and was placed in the garden of Massabielle.

Woodslee in the background. Image © Sœurs de la Charité de Nevers, Archives de Saint-Gildard / Nevers

Around this time, conditions within the school were clean, well-organised, but perhaps a little spartan compared to modern standards. The boarders (or at least the senior girls) would have had some space of their own with a little cupboard and curtains for some privacy.  It is not clear from the photograph below where they would hang their school uniform and their outdoor shoes and coats.

Lourdes Convent Senior Cubicles. Postcard from the private collection of S. Hinton

By 1921, the community had become the owners of Woodslee (the name Massabielle never really stuck) and so an ambitious building plan began to take shape as the school continued to expand.

First, a link building was created between Woodslee and St John’s. On the ground floor, the new building contained an assembly hall with a raised stage. The corridor alongside it which connected the two original houses had a glass roof (not forgetting two W.C.s discretely tucked away at one end).  Above, on the first floor, were four new classrooms … and two more WCs.

Note the reference, in the right-hand margin, to ‘Dr Simpson’ who was neighbour to Lourdes Convent and who lived in Grove Lodge to the south of St John’s.  Image © East Sussex County Council (accessed via The Keep, Brighton)

Late that same year, the sisters became aware (or were made aware) that the roof of Woodslee was in a parlous state.  The ‘master builder’ and temporal visionary of the Convent was Mother Marie-Bernard Colombiès.  From 1923 until her death in 1956, Mother Marie-Bernard oversaw the creation of new classrooms, an additional floor on Woodslee, a gymnasium and, the one most significant improvement for the community – a permanent chapel.

The chapel was, of course, the fundamental religious aspect to the development of Lourdes Convent. A wooden chapel had been built at the outset.  According to English Heritage:

That church would be St Mary’s in Surrenden Road, less than 500 yards from the convent [admittedly “as the crow flies”]. 

This first chapel was, however, a fairly temporary, wooden (and possibly also corrugated iron) construction. It was put up before the purchase of Woodslee, but there does already seem to have  been a northern extension to St John’s, as can be seen in the photograph below.

Postcard from the private collection of Douglas D’Enno

The interior of the chapel, whilst being charming, did not seem to be particularly conducive to prayer and contemplation.  Apart from the impressive altar and the pews, it had much the appearance of a cosy living-room.

Postcard from the private collection of S. Hinton

The photograph below was taken after 1923.  The statue of the Virgin Mary still stood on the lawn in front of Woodslee, but by then the new link building was in place and Woodslee had acquired its additional storey.

Image supplied by Step Back in Time, Queens Road, Brighton

Mother Marie-Bernard and the sisters must dearly have wanted something more permanent.  They did not get it until 1938, but what a magnificent chapel it was.  It had flying buttresses, triple lancet clerestory windows and a narthex.

Image © East Sussex County Council (accessed via The Keep, Brighton) DB/D/136/1344

It is almost impossible to gauge the hight of the chapel from these drawings, available at The Keep only in microfiche format.  However, the photograph below of the community gathered outside the two central ground floor windows, gives some idea of the enormous scale of the building.

Image © Sœurs de la Charité de Nevers, Archives de Saint-Gildard / Nevers

Image © East Sussex County Council (accessed via The Keep, Brighton DB/D/136/1344

The signature of the architect on the plan above is that of John Sainsbury Gilbert, a devout Catholic.  His architectural practice was in Queen Street Place in London although his home throughout his married life was near Windsor in Berkshire.  His wife, Caroline Edmée, had been born in France to British parents.  Perhaps Caroline was influential in encouraging her husband to work for French clients.  The architectural practice must have been successful.  For their ten children the couple were able to employ a governess, a nurse and several servants. The parents clearly passed on their firm religious belief to at least two of their children: both Mary Helen and Dermina (also known as Hermina) became nuns at St Mary’s Convent, Ascot in Berkshire.

The metal frame of the new chapel arrived in December 1938. However, construction did not start until 1939. It continued, under difficult circumstances, throughout the first year of the war.

On 29 September 1939, just 26 days after Britain and France had declared war on Germany, Mother Marie-Bernard wrote to an unnamed priest:

“Mon bien Révérend Père, Notre chapelle est enfin terminée et l’inauguration en est fixé au 8 décembre prochain, fète de l’Immaculé Conception et la nôtre …”  [“Very Reverend Father, Our chapel is finally finished and the inauguration has been fixed for 8 December next, which is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception as well as our own.” Note: Sister Bernadette Soubirous had been canonised on 8 December 1933.]

The Chapel of Lourdes Convent seen from the north.  © James Gray Collection Vol 34_044 courtesy of the Regency Society of Brighton and Hove

The interior of the chapel must have been all that the sisters could have wanted.  As the population, in particular those of the Catholic faith, grew locally, the chapel must often have been full of local people as well as the residents and pupils of the convent.

Undated image of the chapel interior.  Supplied by Step Back in Time, Queens Road, Brighton

Let’s get the bad new over first.  Less than 35 years after its completion, the chapel was torn down, to be replaced by a block of flats and a car parking area. More of that later.

World War II was catastrophic for many, perhaps the majority.  The pupils at the school may have been worrying about their fathers in the forces, or their mothers struggling to feed the family on rations.  On the other hand, Lourdes Convent had the advantage of very extensive playing fields.  During the war, these were put to good use in providing at least hay and probably vegetables as well.  It is intriguing to wonder if these girls were having great fun playing in the meadow rather than seriously helping the war effort.

In the background: on the far left, the gardener’s cottage, and along the skyline, the houses of Cornwell Gardens. Image © Sœurs de la Charité de Nevers, Archives de Saint-Gildard / Nevers

The ill-wind of the war and the grave misfortune of the owners of Grove Lodge, next door to St John’s, proved to be a blessing for the sisters of Lourdes Convent. On 14 October 1940, a bomb hit Grove Lodge, demolishing the north part of the building.

Image © Sœurs de la Charité de Nevers, Archives de Saint-Gildard / Nevers

On the reverse of the 1940 photograph below, the censor had redacted all words indicating location or identifying people:

“A Doctor’s house next door to near a Convent, barely a military objective, received a direct hit, but the house stood it well and the other half of the building was unharmed and is still being used. (London Road)

Image: Unknown photographer,  From the collection of the Regency Society

As none of the occupants of the house, elderly Dr Simpson, his wife Muriel and sisters Rachel and Edith Parry (cook and housemaid) appear in the WWII list of bombing fatalities in Brighton, it must be assumed that they survived.  But, understandably, they appear not to have wished to continue living in the house.  The whole property, house, extensive gardens and gate-house lodge were sold to the convent by the end of the war.

The charming gate-house lodge still exists in almost original form.  It was a later addition to Grove Lodge and built during the time of Dr Simpson in the 1890s.

Grove Lodge gatehouse in 2026 taken from the pathway toward St John’s, now St Bernadette’s R.C. School. The white building behind the Lodge, to the right, is the Preston Park Hotel, built following the demolition of houses in Harrington Road. © S. Hinton

The community, still under the leadership of Mother Marie-Bernard, must have jumped at the chance to enlarge Grove Lodge by building an extension on the north side of the house.

1951 Ordinance Survey map showing site of bomb and subsequent new addition to Grove Lodge map reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Scotland (CC-BY)

Unfortunately, it has to be said that this extension was more practical than beautiful.  It still stands and today forms the main entrance to St Bernadette’s School.

1950s postcard © Archives de la Maison-Mère des Sœurs de la Charité de Nevers

The very detailed Department of Education Inspection Report of  March 1957 gives a very clear picture of what the school looked like at that time:

© Open Government Licence v3.0. /  Archives de la Maison-Mère des Sœurs de la Charité de Nevers

Even as late as 1957, the school did not have “all mod cons”:  the report quoted above found that:  “ the kitchen premises are adequate on the whole … A refrigerator for storing perishable foods, a hot cupboard … and extra oven space are needed.” 

No wonder some of the pupils complained of Sister Clare’s cooking.  She was working in adverse condition.

The main part of the original Grove Lodge is still identifiable in 2026 by its stained glass in the ground floor bay window.  These, amazingly, seem to have survived the bombing. Their rather heavy design and leading indicates the Victorian origins of the house which was built between about 1860 and 1875.

Surviving windows in Grove Lodge in 2026 © S. Hinton

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 sisters decided, with some regret, to sell the school and grounds.  Sister Martha, the Superior and Headmistress wrote to Bishop Bowen:

Reproduced courtesy of the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton ABD/B11/2/42/1

However, their plan did not meet with approval of several parties:  Albert EJ Benham may have been typical of  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 the nuns who wished to lead a more retired life.  On the other hand he was aware of local housing problems,  as shown in this reply Mr Benham:

Bishop Bowen to Mr AEJ Banham 15 May 1972 Reproduced courtesy of the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton ABD/B11/2/42/1

Controversy erupted in the pages of The Argus (see below) with arguments such as loss of trees, increase in traffic (there were to be 64 garages and parking for up to 120 cars) and change of the character of the areas being put in the balance against the need for housing in the town.

The Argus, 28 April 1972.  Image courtesy of the Arundel and Brighton Diocesan Archive ABD/B11/2/42/1

“These would not be required” has been written across the top of this Argus article in Mr Benham’s hand.  This cutting is included in the Lourdes Convent archive, so I can only assume that Mr Benham sent the cutting to the sisters at Lourdes Convent … who then filed it away.

Most of the estate was, indeed, sold off.  The one remaining house (Grove Lodge) and adjacent schoolrooms were reborn as St Bernadette’s Primary school run by Brighton Education department.

In September 1972, 113 senior girl pupils were relocated to Cardinal Newman School in Upper Drive, Hove.  The lower school (primary) was absorbed into the state system but as part of the Catholic Diocese of Chichester and Arundel.

The Kingsmere flats and St Bernadette’s School

The rubble of Lourdes Chapel being removed (1973). The photographer was facing north looking toward Flats 41-60 Kingsmere and was standing on what is now the car park in front of Flats 81-100. © Sœurs de la Charité de Nevers, Archives de Saint-Gildard / Nevers

The sketch map below shows the position of Lourdes Chapel superimposed upon the footprint of Kingsmere Flats.

Sketch map © S. Hinton

Little remains of the original building apart from Grove Lodge and the grotto.  The photograph below, taken in November 2025, shows the former entrance to Lourdes Convent.  The doorway dates from the post-war extension to Grove Lodge, now St Bernadettes R.C. Primary School.

1950s entrance to Lourdes Convent © S. Hinton 2025

Lourdes Convent, Preston Park, was no more.

To find out the history of the community in Brighton, see “Lourdes Convent – The People”

It is often difficult to trace how the sisters from Nevers acquired their estate..  The map below shows the various purchases by the community between 1904 and 1921.

My thanks

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 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.

Gordon Hotels

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Anyone who knows the Metropole Hotel in Brighton will recognise the building below:  the central turret rising out of a pyramid roof, the cast iron balconies, the mansard roofs on the side pavilions and the dormer windows.  And if the image were in colour, we would also recognise the warm red of the brickwork.

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Image courtesy of the « Fonds ancien et local de Dieppe » (Dieppe Archive)

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Caen Stone: Part Three – 20th and 21st centuries

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Once they became mined out, the underground quarries of Caen stone generally presented no problems.  They were excellent for producing mushrooms on a commercial basis.  However, with pressure to build for an expanding population in the mid-20th century, many of the voids had to be filled in before building could take place.  Several quarries, however, played an important and very positive role in the 1940s.  During the bombardment of Caen by the Allies in 1944 these quarries provided safe refuge.

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Refugees (including dogs) from Allied bombing on Caen in June 1944. Image courtesy of “Le Parisien” newspaper.

Although nearly 2000 inhabitants of the city died within two months of the D-Day landings on 6 June, many hundreds more owed their lives to the redundant quarries where their forefathers may have worked for many generations before them.

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Caen Stone: Part Two – 19th century

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In the 11th century, the honey-coloured French limestone used in Sussex may well have come from quarries beneath the centre of the town of Caen itself. William of Normandy had his own quarry at the foot of his castle in the town.  Other quarries opened and closed over the centuries. 

Today there are over 250 hectares (600 acres) of mined galleries beneath the streets of Caen and its suburbs. In a somewhat unpatriotic statement, an inhabitant of the town has compared the area to a certain Swiss cheese: Le sous-sol de Caen est devenu un véritable gruyère constellé d’anciennes carrières. [Underground Caen has become a veritable gruyere cheese, with its constellation of ancient quarries.]

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Caen Stone: Part One – Mediaeval

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You have taken off in a small private plane from Brighton City Airport at Shoreham-by-Sea.  The plane heads directly due south.  About 40 minutes and 177 km later you pass over the coast of France at Ouistreham.  Your pilot follows the course of the river Orne.  Below you, you spot a white gash amid the pattern of green fields. 

L'Ourc Google image

The port of Ouistreham, the Orne river and its canal. In the bottom left-hand corner, the modern outskirts of Caen. (c) Google

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