Frazzling France

In the middle of November, we set off for London, where we were planning to get on board the Eurostar train to take us, for the first time ever, to "the Continent". We arrived at St Pancras Station just three days after the new fast train connection had opened.

Whilst waiting to board the train, we learned that public transport workers in Paris were on strike!! Not sure what we were walking into, we hopped on the Eurostar train and set off.

Two hours and fifteen minutes later, we were in Paris at the Gare du Nord.

After John's first attempt to order food in French (less said the better!), we joined the taxi queue in order to travel to our hotel. The metro lines were working, at reduced capacity, but we weren't confident that we could actually get on the train when it came. An hour later, we hopped into a taxi...and had our first view of the infamous Paris traffic:

as well as our first sights of authentic French architecture:

We arrived at L'Hotel Princesse Isabelle, near La Défense in a suburb called Puteaux, in a north-western direction from the city centre. It had a certain charm:

We were well-served by being directed to dinner at Chez Patrick, a local French restaurant run by a Frenchman married to a Scots woman--and thus, well able to help us order in English! (Yes, it was cheating.) The food was très bon. We then retired to a diet of wall-to-wall French-language television (withn one show that we recognised--in Italian), and the ubiquitous CNN (the European version).

The next day we walked to the Metro station and were able to catch a train without difficulty. Again, it has to be admitted that buying a ticket was made simple by the fact that the Metro was not charging people to ride, because of the reduced services; so John's attempt to ask for "un billet au cité" was met with a gruff wave, pointing through the ticket barrier!

We got off at Charles de Gaulle station, next to the Arc de Triomphe, a hugely impressive monument at the head of the Champs Elysée.

And here, just to prove that we were actually there:

After this we walked for a time along the Champs Elysée:

We had set out thinking that a weekend in Paris would be good. At a dinner here at Wesley House just before we left, one of the student's wives told Elizabeth that he took her to Paris for a surprise visit one weekend and proposed to her under the Eiffel Tower.

So we thought we were in for a 'romantic' weekend. But it was freezing cold (maximum 6 degrees in the middle of the day) and there were huge crowds; the queues under the Tower filled almost the whole base area.

As we determined that we were not, in fact, going to queue in the hope of going up the Tower, we were hassled by beggars for money, we bought some atrocious "coffee" (at least, that is what they called it), and watched in wonderment at the threesomes of armed soldiers patrolling the area. Quite relaxing (not).

But we were there....

(Notice the trinkets imitating the Tower behind Elizabeth in the above photo. We must have encountered about sixty men all told, each trying to sell these!)

We felt utterly frazzled by these experiences, but we had bought a day ticket on one of the tourist buses that drove around the city, so we continued for the rest of the day and did manage to see some of the sights of Paris from the outside--and some on the inside. It was warm inside the bus (but guess who decided we should sit outside on the uncovered top, exposed to the wind blowing off the river, for one leg of the journey???)

We saw the Seine River from various angles:

the Musée du Louvre:

It was huge! But it served decent coffee inside:

and the Cathédrale de Nôtre Dame, a massive building filled with crowds of people (and notices warning of the pickpockets):

As the daylight dimmed, we drove past the part of the city where The Ritz hotel is (there were various references on the bus commentary to a certain princess at this site):

past a spectacular lighting display at the Paris Opéra:

and back to the Champs Elysée at night, which was much more crowded than earlier in the day:

We visited the spectacular shopping malls and bought a few mementos:

and were reminded of a certain offspring of Elizabeth:

before eating dinner (in a French-speaking Italian restaurant), and returning to our hotel. Quite a memorable day!!

The next day would see us travel north into Belgium...the subject for the next post.

Derbyshire part two

Continuing our time in Derbyshire...

Later in the day that we had visited Wirksworth, we went across to Ashbourne, to meet with a local historians George and Trilby Shaw, who are experts on the Cokayne family of Ashbourne. They lived fairly near to the church, with its imposing spire.

George had gathered together various documents he possessed on the Cokaynes, as well as allowing Elizabeth to handle (much to Trilby’s surprise) and John to photograph his precious Cokayne Memoranda, a rare (and extremely expensive) antique book containing wills, genealogies and brass rubbings of various Cokaynes. We are very grateful to Trilby and George for their hospitality and help.

Back at Clay Cross, we were treated to an early Guy Fawkes display (see Holy Island blog re this day) through our bedroom window, that went for a good 2 hours!

Fireworks can still be purchased here by anyone, and many backyards seemed to have a display.

The next day (after another excellent breakfast) we set off for North Wingfield, parish of another branch of the Lowe family, the Cowlishaws. On the way, we admired the famous ‘twisted spire’ of the Chesterfield (yes, this was also a Lowe hangout). Chesterfield Spire belongs to the church of St Marys and All Saints Parish. You can just see it here in the distance.

The actual explanation is that a combination of a lack of cross-bracing, lead cladding, and green timbers inside has caused the spire to distort. At the time it was built, few skilled craftsmen were available as a result of the plague. As the timber shrunk, the spire began to ‘lean’ and distort.

While this perfectly logical reason explains the famous ‘twist’, the folk tales (which concern the devil and a virgin) are rather more interesting. One of these states that the spire was so surprised when a virgin got married in the church, it actually twisted to have a closer look. Apparently it will untwist if another virgin gets married there, as this will convince it that virgins brides are now commonplace. Another says that the devil sat on top of it, and twisted it out of shape.

North Wingfield was another pretty village, with its church perched high on a steep embankment.



We made a search of the graveyard, and while we found Cowlishaws of the right date, they were not of the right family line.





Our next stop was to visit Stanton Moor, where a number of prehistoric stone monuments could be seen. The drive to the moor was quite atmospheric, with lots of fog.





There was also still mist on the moor

and its nearby village:




We did get to view one of the stone monuments, known as The Cork:

as the mist was lifting by the time we walked out to it.





According to http://www.peakdistrictonline.co.uk/ (accessed 24 November 2007) “the moor has long been thought of as a sacred place for the ancient Celtic priests, the Druids, and many of the 'menhirs' or monoliths are believed to have sacred significance and to be associated with Druid worship. These rocks all have names like, the 'Heart Stone', 'Cat Stone', 'Cork Stone', 'Andle Stone', (known locally as 'Twopenny Loaf') - and the magical 'Gorse Stone', known to the Druids as the Maen Gorsedd, the elevated place from where the Druids would address the people.” There is also a stone circle nearby, known as the Nine Ladies Stone Circle. It is around four thousand years old.

Our last visit in Derbyshire was to St Oswald’s Church, Ashbourne, an historic church in Derbyshire whose building began in the 12th century. Ashbourne is a beautiful church with many unique features; one that struck us was that the sanctuary and the nave were not exactly aligned, so that when you stand at the high altar and look out, you can't see half of the congregation in the central seats. Likewise, a number of the congregation would be unable to see the high altar.

However, our main reason for visiting it was again family history. Aren’t you all surprised by this? As a prelude to entering the church grounds, we were greeted by a pheasant, a suitably aristocratic bird given the pursuits of the family we were now tracing.



One of its side chapels of St Oswald’s is dominated by the Cokayne family, whose tombs surprisingly escaped the wrath of those who destroyed many such monuments at the time of Reformation.



Perhaps the presence of Sir Thomas ‘the Magnificent’ Cokayne saved them – he had been knighted much earlier by Henry VIII for ‘rendering great personal service’ to the king at the siege of Tournai in France.



Sir Thomas is Elizabeth’s 12 great grandfather, and has what is believed to be one of the first rhyming epitaphs recorded:

Here lieth Sir Thomas Cokayne
Made knight at Turney and Turwyne
Who builded here fayre house twayne
With may profettes that remayne
And three fayre parkes impaled he
For his successors here to be
And did his house and name restore
Which others had decayed before
And was knight so worshipfull
So vertuous wyse and pitifull
His deeds deserve that his good name
Lyve here in everlasting fame
Who had issue iii sones and iii daughters



Sir Thomas was interesting because despite his loyalty to King Henry, he also apparently secretly continued as a Catholic, and was buried with the rites of the Catholic church. He is buried with his wife Lady Barbara Fitzherbert.

Sir Thomas also shares the space with his forebears, and some of his descendants. The oldest tomb is that of Sir John Cokayne who died in 1372.

As well as representing Derbyshire in several parliaments of Edward III, he was also a Steward of John of Gaunt. In 1412 the tomb was modified to include the effigy of his eldest son, Edmund who was killed at the Battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July 1403 when Henry (Hotspur) Percy challenged Henry IV.

The tomb of his son John who died in 1447 is on the left of him, complete with effigies of himself and his wife, Margaret Longford. His collar apparently shows he was a steward of the House of Lancaster.

On the right of Sir John is that of his grandson, also John, who died in 1505. He is buried there with his wife Agnes Vernon. This photo shows the Cokayne crest on their tomb.

The next generation, that of the dueling Thomas who was father to Sir Thomas, is missing due to said Thomas being buried at Youlgrave church. If you missed this story, please see our previous post on Youlgrave church.

The last thing worthy of mention in the church is the font, which was placed in the church around 1241. It is apparently considered to be a good example of Early English work, though Elizabeth’s main interest in it was that it had been the actual baptismal font for all of the ancestors now resting peacefully in their chapel.

We were also lucky enough to visit Hartle Hall, the family home of Edmund Cokayne and his wife Elizabeth Herthull, whose name the hall bears. As it is privately owned, it wasn’t possible to see the inside, but the owners allowed us to take photos of its exterior.

Elizabeth was gripped by a strange new disease, "manor envy", as it is such a lovely old house.

But this was matched by John's "tomb envy", at all the ancestral tombs that Elizabeth had been able to discover and visit.