My immediate impression on arriving at Chambois castle is a surge of hapless… well… I’m not sure, really. I’m lost for a single, summary word. A diminutive castle stands upright on a section of mown grass in the tiny town with which it shares its name, its cream-coloured walls shining in the late afternoon light. It is so perfectly formed and resplendent that I want to hug it.
Perhaps it’s a result of the long and hot day’s cycling – I’m dehydrated, slightly stressed, used up – and my critical faculty is off kilter. But it seems unnaturally attractive. Which is slightly ironic, given that it is completely unyielding. It is not much more than bare limestone walls, I can’t get inside and I certainly can’t get into position to recreate the photograph taken by the young TE Lawrence in 1907. Blimey, I think, I’m falling in love with four limestone walls.
There’s a mismatch in English and French over the word castle, which in schools we translated as château. For us, anything with even a hint of fortification is classed as a castle, and yet for the French the word château is really a post-renaissance palace, the sort of thing you find in the Loire, and much more like our grandest country houses. Their equivalent of our castle is more of a ‘chateau-fort’.
And Chambois is definitely a chateau-fort. So secure even now that I can barely see the interior and my videos and photos all turn out rambling, unfocussed and ill-directed – basically I push my hand in as far as it will go and snap away in hope – and end up with an over-exposed inspection of some random vegetation and an in-depth study of a single railing at a surreal angle.
I twist my head and peer in. There is nothing more than four bare walls in which I can see the holes for beams, a fireplace hovering twenty feet above the ground on the left and arched windows six foot deep, the Great Hall, I assume. The staircases are built into the corner towers. There are some decorative features, but in such a bald layout it is hard to picture life. The only noise I hear is wood-pigeons cooing, which presumably would have been there 850 years ago too – or possibly not, because they would have been lunch.
Chambois was built in the second half of the 12th Century by William de Mandeville, on the instruction of Henry II and it has similarities to the Tower of London, with its four corner towers. In fact the castle we see today is only the keep, the strong, defensive core, and any outlying walls have gone. It is a lovely looking building however: taller than it is wide, 80 or 90 feet of sheer limestone, its infill walls between the towers displaying decorative windows. Some sections of the walls are made of rough-hewn stone, but much of it is ashlar, still in beautiful condition nearly 900 years on. At ground level, tentative talar slopes reach out just a couple of feet. Some of the machicolations (apparently added in the 14th Century) are still there, giving a nice detail to the plain walls, their crenellations still riding above them.
I circle the castle and there is still no way in. On the rear of the building chips in the stonework make me wonder if they resulted from World War II, when the town became the site of the Battle of Chambois in August 1944, as the Allies, Poles and Canadians, fought to close the Falaise Gap, where a number of German troops were surrounded.
And now to try to recreate the photograph taken by the young TE Lawrence in 1907…
TE Lawrence’s Photograph of Chambois Castle
The young TE Lawrence doesn’t write anywhere in his letters about visiting Chambois, but we know he was there because of the photograph he took of its castle. Interestingly, this is what we often find: in the last week of his trips he often didn’t write letters because was on his way home (and he says he doesn’t really like writing them anyway). Perhaps he thought he would arrive back before any letter he sent. On this occasion, his father was about to join the rest of the family in Jersey, and so there was no need to write – his father he could tell them all about the second half of the trip, from Evreux. The result for us, of course, is a certain gap in the record.
Similarly, on this trip, there was the castle at nearby Falaise, which he neither photographed nor writes anything about, and yet it is impossible to think of him not visiting William the Conqueror’s birthplace. The town is even en route to Coutances where they were headed.
But back to Chambois, and my attempt to recreate the image taken by the young TE Lawrence in 1907… with all the usual attendant dangers, of lion cages and falling into rivers… Unfortunately the chance of recreating this one is nil. I find the angle he chose, but in order to contain the whole building, I must to back up – and I bump into a garden wall, eight foot of it. There’s no way to get into position. As discussed before, the young Lawrence was not averse to breaking a few rules (even part of a church pew on one notable occasion remembered by his friend, CFC Beeson), so I could take this as a challenge… and just find a way to get the job done…? But the wall is impenetrable - in fact you can see it even in his image - and the only gate is locked. Ho, hum…
