My Childhood Castle

For some reason I thought it might be fun to show you the castle where we grew up. This land and these buildings are soaked in happy memories. Here is a photo taken by a friend, B., right after the castle was recently sold to the village of Lamorlaye where we lived in France.

The castle housed an Institute of the Bible, l'Institut Biblique Europeen, created for the training of Protestant pastors and lay ministers from all over Europe, Africa, and some from Asia. The school was bi-lingual, French and English. Every class was taught in both languages. If students came from the countries with romance languages, they tended to study in French. If they came from Northern Europe or Britain, they tended to study in English. Africans studied in the language of whichever country had colonized them. The staff and faculty were also international. The school moved there in 1960 from a manor house in Chatou, a suburb of Paris. The village of Lamorlaye is an hour North of Paris near the town of Chantilly. The village is surrounded for miles by famous woods and trail.

The school was sadly disbanded in 2000-2001. The community lasted about 50 yrs. People living together, rehabbing old buildings, teaching, laughing, playing, rubbing each other wrong, resolving issues, learning to love each other. In this building they dug the floors out of dirt piles and stuff that piled up to the second floor, relaid warped oak floors, scraped burn marks off the floor where tramps had warmed themselves, carved replacements and repaired missing moldings and medallions, stripped, painted, put in sewers, heat, repaired plumbing.. They transformed the ballroom into a chapel, the private chapel (in the tower) into a bathroom, and the former carriage house into my mother's recording studio...

B. took the all the pictures except for the postcard and etching. I hadn't seen her in a very long time and she came to visit my parents' house last Winter during my visit. We laughed the whole time. One of my family's furlough years was spent in North Carolina where my two older siblings went to a VERY strict and legalistic boarding school. B. and I were in 6th grade together in a small little Christian School in town (actually I was in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade depending on the subject).

The very first day that I met her at her house, she challenged me to climb a tree. As you can see in the background of the picture, I grew up with many trees and did not consider this a challenge. When I climbed the tree, it made B. mad because she had never succeeded at it. So she took the garden hose and tried to wash the upstart out of the tree. Her mother was furious, but it was the beginning of a long and funny friendship. Later, when I attended that same VERY strict boarding school for 2 years, her mother was my guardian, there being no furloughing family anywhere near. They took good care of me and spoiled me by taking me into their home as many week-ends as were allowed; they also "adopted" my 2 room mates. B. came to spend the Summer with my family in France between my Junior and Senior year of American High School. Eventually, she and her sister attended the school in the castle so she has her own lovely set of memories. She drove by to take a few photos. a few years ago. She's now a sharp shooting Colonel Nurse in the U.S. Army. As such, she sees a lot more of Europe than I do. She could now shoot me out of any old tree...

This is the gate on the North side of the wall that curves around the front of the large oval lawn and driveway seen in the first photo. It is tucked behind the lilac patch that you see on the right in that photo. When the school first moved into the castle, we lived in the top floor of the long building on the right. The apartment was just behind those bushes. We went to school through this gate everyday.

In this photo, if you look at the top left corner, you can see that the fence is composed of tall iron bars, set atop a low wall (varying between 2 - 4 feet high) topped with gold arrows. My sister V. used to walk along the top like a tight rope walker, placing her feet between each arrowhead at 90 degrees to the bar.

Here's how the building looked from the back well over 200 ago when it was a luxurious home to French nobility. I copied this from a reproduction of an old etching.

Here is an old postcard showing what the castle looked like in 1962 with a dirt drive and fields between the highway and the castle, allowing a clear view. It looks like it was a warm scruffy Summer day.

This is what the castle looks like now from the national highway, with apartment buildings where there used to be fields.

And a statue of a race horse and jockey on a "rond point" blocking the view. Since I was a child I think that every intersection in France has been replaced with British style round-abouts. This is famous horse racing country and Lamorlaye used to have more race horses than villagers when we were growing up. The village sign used to read 366 Inhabitants, 1600 Race Horses. Up the road, near the castle of Chantilly (which houses many Leonardo da Vinci drawings and the Very Rich Hours of the Duc de Berry) there are famous fancy stables which the Prince of Conde had built because he believed that he would be reincarnated as a horse. Nearby are famous race tracks where royalty hob-nobs to this day.

Facing our castle on the other side of the highway is a training field for horses which is huge. From 5:00 A.M. to evening every day "strings" of lads and trainers would ride their horses from the hundreds of stables in our village to that field and take turns training.

Once someone hired a donkey and cart to give rides around the oval lawn of our castle at some child's birthday party. The donkey escaped and ran across the lawn, down the street, across the highway, and onto the training field through the tall galloping legs of highly bred horses. There was a string of children and adults screaming all the way behind him. I can't remember how we caught him. It was thrilling.

Thank you B. for the photos and the laughter.