Guildford Catenians were privileged to take part in two private visits organised by Brother Treasurer Stephen Rowden on Tuesday 12th August. The Brothers and Wives were received at Farnborough Hill School by Director of Admissions, Clare Duffin, wife of Ascot & Sunningdale Catenian John Duffin. She guided them around the school, a mid-Victorian creation which was commissioned by celebrated publisher Thomas Longman in 1860. This vast Gothic building with equally vast beautifully kept gardens, was the home of Empress Eugénie, widow of Napoléon III, for forty years.
In 1927 The Sisters of Christian Education bought the house from the Empress's estate and have since added considerably to the original building making it suitable for a large girls' school. The most recent addition is the superb St Cecilia Suite which was opened last April and is entirely devoted to the teaching of music.
Left to right;
Bro. Steve Rowden,
Bro. Leo Cash,
Bro. Geoff Bignell,
Bro. David Allen,
Bro. Martin Mc Hugh,
Patricia Mc Hugh,
Bro. Claude Kauffmann
About 2km from the School on the A325 is St Michael's Abbey which was designed by the well-known French Architect Gabriel Destailleur whose only other building in England is Waddeston Manor, the palatial Buckinghamshire home of the Rothschilds. The Abbey is pure Flamboyant French Gothic with two-metre long gargoyles and pinnacles and, apart from the marble floors and columns, both in the Abbey and the Crypt, which are Italian from Carrara, was entirely built with French materials by French stonemasons. One would think that one is somewhere on the Loire valley when visiting the Abbey and the adjoining monastery. The building, which was constructed under the Empress’s supervision between 1883 and 1888, was intended to serve as a Mausoleum for the Empress, the Emperor and the Prince Imperial, Louis Napoléon.
Upon completion of the Abbey, the bodies of both the Emperor and the Prince Imperial, who died during the Zulu war as a Captain in the British Army, were transferred from the Catholic Church in Chislehurst and placed in the Crypt into two of three Aberdeen granite sarcophagi. These were donated by Queen Victoria who was an old friend of the Empress and a frequent visitor to Farnborough Hill.
The Empress invited Benedictine monks from Solesmes Abbey in France to take charge of St Michael’s which, in effect, became part of the French Benedictine province. French was the official language of the community until 1947 when English monks started to come to Farnborough and gradually replaced the French ones.
The Empress died in 1920 and her body was placed in the central sarcophagus in the Abbey. Her funeral was attended by King George V and Queen Mary as well as many other distinguished guests. These included; Prince Victor Napoléon, then head of the Imperial family and his wife, Princess Clémentine of the Belgians, Kings Alfonso XIII of Spain and Manuel II of Portugal.
Thanks to Bro. Claude Kauffmann for the narrative.
