france Archives - James Clay Stuff

In July I made a trip over to France and Germany. The first stage of the trip was a sea crossing from Newhaven to Dieppe and we arrived in Dieppe at 5am.

The last time I had been in Dieppe was in the 1980s on a family holiday. It was surprising how little had changed. Though the railway and harbour station had disappeared.

Combined rail and ferry services ended in 1994 after Stena Line, at that time operating as Stena Sealink on the Newhaven-Dieppe and Dover-Calais crossings, had transferred to a new terminal on the other side of the harbour. These changes coincided with the opening of the Channel Tunnel and the concomitant withdrawal of all SNCF Channel boat trains. The whole station was demolished in early 1995, and virtually no physical traces now remain.

The castle was still there at the top of the cliff.

Many of the restaurants and shops I had experienced in the 1980s were no longer there, which wasn’t a surprise, but the Monoprix department store was still there.

We had intended to have breakfast in the port, stay a a few hours and potentially even have lunch. However there wasn’t anything open (we could see) so headed off to Fecamp instead.

Over the last few months we thought we wouldn’t be going on holiday at all because of Covid-19 and the lockdown. We had thought about going away in the UK, we looked at York but it was proving expensive and things we wanted to do weren’t open. At the end of July we checked a few sites and found that we could book a Eurocamp holiday relatively cheaply, especially compared to the UK holidays we had been looking at. We did wonder about the impact of Covid-19, but the story in France appeared to be less risky than in the UK! So we booked the holiday and five days we were driving down to Folkestone to catch the Eurotunnel.

Whilst we were staying at the La Croix Du Vieux Pont campsite we drove over to visit Château de Pierrefonds. It was a short drive and there was a free car park close by where we parked.

The Château de Pierrefonds is a castle situated in the commune of Pierrefonds in the Oise département (Picardy) of France.

It is on the southeast edge of the Forest of Compiègne, northeast of Paris, between Villers-Cotterêts and Compiègne.

This was a fantastic looking and in some ways fantastical looking castle. We hadn’t booked in advance, so we couldn’t go into the castle, but we did walk around the castle and admired it.

Due to Covid-19 restrictions if we wanted to go in, we had to buy pre-booked timed tickets on the internet. Oh for the days when we could just walk up to a castle or an attraction and walk in.

The Château de Pierrefonds includes most of the characteristics of defensive military architecture from the Middle Ages, though it underwent a major restoration in the 19th century.

In the 12th century, a castle was built on this site. Two centuries later, in 1392, King Charles VI turned the County of Valois (of which Pierrefonds was part) into a Duchy and gave it to his brother Louis, Duke of Orléans. From 1393 to his death in 1407, the latter had the castle rebuilt by the court architect, Jean le Noir.

In March 1617, during the early troubled days of Louis XIII’s reign, the castle, then the property of François-Annibal d’Estrées, who joined the “parti des mécontents” (party of discontent) led by Henri II, Prince of Condé, was besieged and taken by troops sent by Richelieu, the secretary of state for war. Its demolition was started, but not carried through to the end because of the enormity of the task. The exterior works were razed, the roofs destroyed and holes made in the towers and curtain walls.

The castle remained a ruin for more than two centuries. Napoleon I bought it in 1810 for less than 3,000 francs. During the 19th century, with the rediscovery of the architectural heritage of the Middle Ages, it became a “romantic ruin”.

Napoleon III decided to commission architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc to rebuild it. He applied his architectural designs to create the ideal château, such as would have existed in the Middle Ages.