St. Peter's Anglican Church Château-d'Oex · Serving the English-speaking Community Since 1899

What did the English do all winter?

In February 1895 the Journal de Château-d’Œx reported that an English club had been founded in the village: “Un club anglais s’est fondé”. Its premises were the billiard room of the Hôtel Berthod, which the paper called “très-confortable”. The hotel was open in winter for the first time.1

The English came to the Vaud Alps for months at a time. The reasons are set out on another page of this site: consumption, and the belief that climate was medicine. A prescription of Alpine air was a course of treatment rather than a suggestion to travel, and it ran to five months and more. At Davos, winter guests outnumbered summer guests for the first time in 1875. A stay of that length needed a routine, and the visitors built one out of clubs, fixtures and competitions.

On the ice

Skating came first. A skating club appears in the Vaud papers from 1876, on the lake at Lausanne, long before the mountain resorts had rinks of their own. The Feuille d’avis de Montreux was carrying one by 1900, and the Journal de Leysin by 1905.2 The mountain rinks came later. Les Avants and Caux appear in the press from 1904, and Territet not until 1909. That puts the Vaud resorts a good twenty years behind Davos and St Moritz.3

Curling is the clearest British import of them all. At the end of December 1905 the Journal et liste des étrangers de Montreux announced that a curling club had been founded: “Un Curling-club s’est constitué”. Every morning, it added, the curlers were out on the skating rink. The notice speaks only of “nos stations des Alpes” and does not say which resort it meant.4

The Vaud papers mention curling nearly a hundred times in connection with Les Avants, far less often with Caux and Territet, and only once with Leysin. In the local press, at least, curling belonged to the smart winter resorts above the lake rather than to the sanatorium villages.5

Skiing came last. Les Avants has reports of it from 26 December 1903, and Villars from February 1905.6

Summer, the lake and the church

Summer had its own games. An advertisement in the Journal de Vevey in 1880 lists “Lawn Tennis” among a hotel’s attractions, alongside pistol shooting. A cricket club appears in 1885, and a golf club in 1894.7

Rowing on the lake was a Swiss affair. There were regattas at Vevey and Ouchy from 1864, a Société nautique at Ouchy from 1882 and a Club nautique de Vevey from 1884. The English took part, and a regatta prize list printed in two papers in September 1900 puts “Anglais” fourth. No source we have found shows them founding a club of their own on the water.8

The English churches had their place in the same social calendar. In May 1890 the Feuille d’avis de Vevey carried the same advertisement in English in three issues running. It announced “a grand Bazar” on the 6th and 7th, with “a fine art-section” and a concert. Its object was “the debt upon the English church”.9

Invalids and sportsmen

The historian Susan Barton argues that much of this began with the invalids. Reviewing her book, Jill Steward summed up the argument: people “thrown upon their own devices with long periods of time to kill found ways of alleviating the tedium not only by bobsleighing, tobogganing, skiing and skating, but also by creating clubs, associations and regulatory frameworks within which these activities were organised and carried out”.10

The Vaud press supports a narrower version. Writing about Leysin in February 1901, the Journal et liste des étrangers recorded that all the able-bodied boarders, “tous les pensionnaires valides”, went in for winter sports, luge and skating. The sentence then turns separately to the sick.11 The sportsmen were among the boarders, but they were the able-bodied ones. The Château-d’Œx report of 1895 makes the same distinction from the other side. The invalids, of whom there were a number, took part in the amusements “avec modération”.12

A London weekly sorted the resorts differently. In February 1907 The Bystander grouped Caux, Château-d’Œx and Les Avants together. These were the places where “congregate the millionaires and those people who demand amusement only, and who are neither consumptives nor first-class skaters”. Its account of what they did there was brief: “Games, exercise, eating, drinking, dancing, flirting, there is nothing else.”13

Nor do the dates in the Vaud press show the sanatorium villages leading. A skating club is reported at Montreux in 1900, five years before one at Leysin. A hockey club is reported at Montreux in 1902, a year before Leysin’s. Leysin comes first for bobsleigh and little else.14

Sport at Leysin was nonetheless a serious matter by 1910. On 9 and 10 January that year the patinoire des Avants held the international hockey championships of Europe. The Feuille d’avis de Vevey reported that the team going to represent Switzerland was drawn from Leysin, Lausanne and Vevey.15 A village of sanatoria was supplying players to an international side. That does not show that patients founded winter sport, but it does show that Leysin’s sporting life was more than a therapeutic one.

Cups and fixtures, 1911–1914

By 1911 the resorts were playing one another. In January that year the London Evening Standard filed a report from Villars-sur-Ollon: “For the Villars curling cup four clubs sent rinks — Montana, Chateau d’Oex, Villars, and Lausanne.” Villars beat Montana by 9 points to 6 and were made favourites, but Montana then beat them in the cup match. Lausanne “brought off a surprise” by beating Montana, who “also went down before Chateau d’Oex”. Villars and Château-d’Œx finished level on two wins each, and Villars took the play-off “by ten points to seven”.16

The paper explained none of this to its readers. It called Villars against Montana “the usual annual match”, and the golden ski and golden skate “the usual annual competition”, so these were already settled events. In the golden ski, held up at Les Ecovets, Captain Lees won the men’s race and Miss F. Anderson the ladies’.16

The Standard was not a disinterested reporter. It ran a recurring column datelined from Château-d’Œx, and that same winter it advertised its own travel desk. Intending visitors to the winter sport resorts of Switzerland could apply to “THE STANDARD Continental Department, 134, Fleet Street, E.C.” and “obtain free information as to Travel and Hotels”. Seven resorts were named, with Château-d’Œx second. The paper’s enthusiasm for the resorts was part of a business.17

Not everything was organised. On a Thursday afternoon at the end of November 1913, two young Englishwomen staying at Château-d’Œx walked out of the village to climb Mont Cray. The mountain stands 6,805 feet high, the paper said, and they took no guide. Darkness caught them and they lost the path, and Miss Helen Ball fell about thirty feet down a ravine and broke her arm. Search parties found them four hours later with lanterns and carried them back to their hotel. Her companion is named only as Miss G. Gayen. The story was carried by papers across Britain and Ireland, as far as County Down.18

By December 1914 Villars had become a centre in its own right. The illustrated Vaud paper Les Alpes vaudoises wrote about it in English that month. It described Villars, “whose rink is the second largest in Switzerland”, as “now regarded as the most important centre of English figure skating”. English figure skating was a school of its own, distinct from the Continental manner, and “the English Figure Skating Club has a portion of the rink”.19 The same article named a man called Bishop, “Vice-President of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club”, in connection with the Villars Curling Club, and a Captain Holmes Tarn. The Royal Caledonian is the Scottish governing body of curling.20

One winter, from the inside

In the winter of 1921–22 an English schoolmaster spent the season at the Hôtel Berthod at Château-d’Œx. He had brought his whole school with him, which is a story of its own, and through the winter he wrote home to his local paper in Kent. That November the Journal de Château-d’Œx also named a “Ski Club Anglais” in the village.21

His letter of 5 December tells of a frost every night for three weeks and no snow at all, so his boys skated. “All have now got beyond the beginners’ stage and are busily employed at elementary figure skating and ice hockey,” he wrote. English people seemed “to have come up in numbers lately”, and the rink was very crowded, “too much so for comfort”.22

By January a season was running. The Château-d’Œx ice hockey team had “won the Caux Challenge Cup”, with one of his boys playing in the village side. On 2 January the Oxford Canadians played at Château-d’Œx and “gave a wonderful exposition of the game”. The week before he wrote there had been horse races on the snow, the Courses de Chevaux. They included skijöring, in which “the ski-er is towed by the horse round the course”. The horses “were of all sorts, from cavalry chargers to bus horses”. The course ran about three-quarters of a mile, and the winner took a minute and forty seconds. Ski races for novices followed on 13 January, and then came the skating and ice-waltzing competitions and the ski jumping.23

The season in print, and a club that stayed

By the 1920s a reader in London could look up the whole winter before booking it. In November 1924 the Gentlewoman, a London society weekly, printed “The Swiss Sports Programme — 1924-25”. It is a fixture list, dated and arranged resort by resort, beginning in December. Vaud appears all through it. In December 1924 Montreux had ski excursions on five dates. Château-d’Œx had ski and toboggan races, a Venetian festival and international hockey matches from the 15th to the 31st. Les Avants was down for a curling match on Boxing Day. From the 26th St Cergue had a rink carnival, ski races, amateur theatricals and dances, and from the 27th Caux had toboggan races and a fancy dress ball.24

The English schools and universities were in the list as well. Mürren had an ice hockey match on 22 December, Oxford against Cambridge, and Wengen had Oxford and Cambridge ski races on the 27th. From 20 to 30 December Zuoz College played “English Public School Teams” at hockey and curling.24

In January 1929 the Royal Caledonian District Medal for French-speaking Switzerland was played at Caux, between Caux and the “Château-d’Œx Visitors Curling Club”.25 Eleven months later, in December 1929, the Journal de Château-d’Œx reported the same club electing its committee. It had a president, a treasurer and their colleagues, with names belonging to the valley rather than to the hotels.26

We know these clubs mostly through a few lines in the newspapers. If you have memories, photographs, club records or family papers from the winter seasons at Château-d’Œx or the other Vaud resorts, please write to us at info(a)stpeters.ch.

Unless another archive is named, the newspapers above were consulted at Scriptorium, Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire de Lausanne (scriptorium.ch). The Tonbridge, London and other British papers were read at the British Newspaper Archive.

  1. Journal de Château-d’Œx, 2 February 1895, p. 2 (Scriptorium, Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire de Lausanne, item 472228). The sentence reads: “Un club anglais s’est fondé et a pou[r] local très-confortable la salle de billard de l’Hôtel Berthod, ouvert pour la pr[emière fois] en hiver.” A second paper carries the same “club anglais” a year and a half later: Le Progrès de Château-d’Œx, 22 August 1896 (item 469524). What the club was for is lost in the margin of the page, so we do not say it was a sporting club. ↩

  2. First appearances of the phrase in the Vaud papers held by Scriptorium: a skating club on the lake at Lausanne from 1876, the Feuille d’avis de Montreux carrying one by 1900 and the Journal de Leysin by 1905. A first mention in a newspaper is not the same as a founding. These three dates come from searches whose queries and item numbers were not written down at the time, and they have not since been re-run, so they are offered as the weakest kind of evidence on this page. ↩

  3. First mentions in the same corpus, by resort: “patinoire des Avants” returns 417 items, the earliest 9 January 1904. ↩

  4. Journal et liste des étrangers de Montreux, 30 December 1905, p. 5 (item 429653): “Un Curling-club s’est constitué [là]”, and “chaque matin les « curlers » e[ssaient] sur la place de patinage”. “Un Curling-club s’est constitué” is the only occurrence of the phrase in the whole Vaud corpus. The notice does not name the resort, and we have not established it. ↩

  5. Counts of the word “curling” against each place in the Scriptorium corpus: Les Avants 98, Caux 19, Territet 13, Leysin 1. Counting how often a village is named in its own regional press may measure the press rather than the village. By these counts Château-d’Œx barely registers, yet a London paper reporting the Villars curling cup of 1911 has Château-d’Œx sending a rink and finishing level with Villars (note 16). ↩

  6. Skiing first appears against Les Avants on 26 December 1903 (Journal et liste des étrangers de Montreux) and against Villars on 9 February 1905 (Journal de Bex). ↩

  7. The tennis advertisement is Journal de Vevey, 11 September 1880 (item 244339), which is the only part of this note we can point to a source for. The cricket club of 1885 and the golf club of 1894 are first mentions in the same corpus, but neither the item numbers nor the searches behind them were recorded, and they have not been re-run. ↩

  8. The Léman clubs: regattas at Vevey and Ouchy from 1864, a Société nautique at Ouchy from 1882 and a Club nautique de Vevey from 1884. The prize list is carried in two papers in September 1900 (items 119525 and 17539): “Embarcations: … 3° Club nautique; 4°: Anglais”. A Vaud paper printing English sporting news is not evidence of an English institution in Vaud. When the Journal de Vevey wrote about a “yacht club” in 1866 it was writing about Cowes, and the Royal Yacht Squadron, founded in 1812: Journal de Vevey, 1866 (item 245228), “Le club de Cowes prend le nom … Fondé en 1812, le Royal Squadron…” ↩

  9. Feuille d’avis de Vevey, 2, 3 and 5 May 1890, all p. 3 (items 252028, 252162 and 252056). ↩

  10. Susan Barton, Healthy Living in the Alps: The Origins of Winter Tourism in Switzerland, 1860–1914 (Manchester University Press, 2008). We have not seen the book, and its title, publisher and date here follow the usual citation rather than a copy we have handled. The passage quoted is from Jill Steward’s review of it, Reviews in History, no. 796 (2009), where she summarises Barton’s argument rather than quoting Barton’s own conclusion. ↩

  11. Journal et liste des étrangers de Montreux, de Vevey, 9 February 1901, p. 5 (item 397750): “Tous les pensionnaires valides s’ado[nnent aux] sports de l’hiver, luge, patinage, etc. Quant aux malades, ils…” ↩

  12. Journal de Château-d’Œx, 2 February 1895, p. 2, as note 1: “Les malades, car il y en a dans [un certain] no[m]bre, profitent avec modération de ces divertissements.” ↩

  13. “Distinguished Visitors to Davos: The Playground of Europe”, The Bystander, 13 February 1907, p. 20 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0001851/19070213, art. 020), read on the page image. One journalist’s framing of the resorts, and worth weighing against the other evidence on this page rather than taken as settling it. ↩

  14. First mentions in the Scriptorium corpus, and offered as nothing more. Only the years are recorded in our research notes; the months, item numbers and searches are not, so the comparison is given by year alone. A first mention in a newspaper is not the same as a founding, and the sample is small. If the sanatorium villages had led the way, their clubs ought to appear first; in these dates they do not do so consistently, and we would rather say so than tidy it. ↩

  15. Feuille d’avis de Vevey, 6 January 1910, p. 4 (item 286769). ↩

  16. London Evening Standard, 23 January 1911, p. 12 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0000610/19110123, art. 109), read on the page image, under the heading SPORTS IN SWITZERLAND — RESULTS OF CURLING AND OTHER COMPETITIONS. Datelined Villars-sur-Ollon on the Monday. The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette carried a version of the same report the following day. The paper names winners for the golden ski only; what it says about the golden skate is lost where the column was cut. The winners of the two golden ski events are printed as Captain Lees and Miss F. Anderson; neither is identified further here. That Château-d’Œx sent a curling rink to the cup is something the Vaud papers alone would not have told us. ↩↩

  17. London Evening Standard, 28 February 1911, p. 5 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0000183/19110228, art. 327), read on the page image. The advertisement is boxed and reads in full: “By applying to THE STANDARD Continental Department, 134, Fleet Street, E.C., intending visitors to The Winter Sport Resorts of SWITZERLAND e.g., ADELBODEN, CHÂTEAU D’OEX, ENGELBERG, GSTAAD, KANDERSTEG, GRINDELWALD, ST. MORITZ etc., may obtain free information as to Travel and Hotels on stating their requirements.” The same advertisement ran on several other days that winter. That does not make the paper’s reports false, and the curling scores are the kind of detail nobody invents; it does mean the enthusiasm should be read as part of a business. ↩

  18. Banbridge Chronicle, County Down, 3 December 1913, p. 2 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0000953/19131203, art. 130), read on the page image. The report is credited to the Daily Chronicle’s Geneva correspondent, and the same paragraph ran in at least six British papers on 5 and 6 December. They are therefore one source, not several, and the Daily Chronicle itself has not been found. The date is worked out rather than printed: the paper appeared on a Wednesday and says the two women set out “on Thursday afternoon”, which puts the climb on 27 November 1913. That assumes the report reached Banbridge within the week, which is likely but not certain. We know nothing more of either woman. ↩

  19. Les Alpes vaudoises, December 1914, pp. 6–7 (item 668448). The passage is printed in English in a French-language paper. The footnote marker after “English figure skating” is in the original. ↩

  20. Les Alpes vaudoises, December 1914, p. 7 (item 668448). Bishop is a surname here, not a title; his forename is cut off in the print. “Royal Caledonian” returns three items in 683,145 — this one and the two Château-d’Œx reports of January 1929 at note 25. ↩

  21. The “Ski Club Anglais” is named in the Journal de Château-d’Œx, 5 November 1921. ↩

  22. Tonbridge Free Press, 16 December 1921, p. 3 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0004173/19211216, art. 031), read on the page image. The letter is dated at Château-d’Œx on 5 December 1921. The writer is J. Le Fleming, principal of Eton House, Tonbridge, which spent the winter of 1921–22 at the Hôtel Berthod. ↩

  23. Tonbridge Free Press, 27 January 1922, p. 2 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0004173/19220127, art. 020), read on the page image across three crops. The letter is dated at Château-d’Œx on 17 January 1922. The paper prints the boy’s name as Harlow; he is not otherwise identified here, and neither are the other competitors named in the report. ↩

  24. “The Swiss Sports Programme — 1924-25”, Gentlewoman, 15 November 1924, p. 36 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0003340/19241115, art. 188), read on the page image. The Vaud entries for December read: “3, 10, 17, 24, 31. Montreux: Ski Excursions.” “15–31. Chateau D’Oex: Ski and Toboggan Races, Venetian Festival, International Hockey Matches.” “26. Les Avants: Curling Match.” “26–31. St. Cergue: Rink Carnival, Ski Races, Amateur Theatricals and Dances.” “27–31. Caux: Toboggan Races, Fancy Dress Ball.” The feature continues on p. 42, which carries January and February and has not been read on the image. The programme appears under this title only once in the archive, so it cannot be used to follow the calendar from year to year. ↩↩

  25. Le Progrès de Château-d’Œx, 7 January 1929 (item 476752), and Journal de Château-d’Œx, 8 January 1929 (item 473455). ↩

  26. Journal de Château-d’Œx, 6 December 1929 (item 473499). The committee members are described rather than named: the page image was not re-read at the standard we require before printing a person’s name. ↩

Questions answered

What did British visitors to the Swiss Alps do all winter?
They built a routine out of clubs, fixtures and competitions. A stay in the Vaud Alps ran to five months and more, and the visitors filled it with skating, curling, ice hockey, tobogganing and, last of all, skiing. In February 1895 the Journal de Château-d'Œx reported that an English club had been founded in the village. Its premises were the billiard room of the Hôtel Berthod, which was open in winter for the first time.
Was there an English curling club in Switzerland?
Curling was the clearest British import to the Vaud resorts, and several of them had clubs. At the end of December 1905 a Montreux visitors' paper reported that a curling club had been founded at one of the Alpine resorts, without naming it. In January 1911 Villars, Château-d'Œx, Lausanne and Montana sent rinks to the Villars curling cup. A Villars Curling Club was reported in English in December 1914. In January 1929 the Royal Caledonian District Medal was played at Caux, between Caux and the Château-d'Œx Visitors Curling Club. The Royal Caledonian Curling Club is the Scottish governing body of curling.
Did tuberculosis patients invent winter sports?
Only in part, on the evidence of the Vaud press. In Jill Steward's summary, the historian Susan Barton argues that invalids with long periods of time to kill created the clubs and associations within which winter sports were organised. Writing of Leysin in February 1901, a Vaud paper recorded that all the able-bodied boarders went in for winter sports, luge and skating, and then turned separately to the sick. The sportsmen at Leysin were among the boarders, but they were the able-bodied ones. Nor do the first press mentions show the sanatorium villages leading. A skating club is reported at Montreux in 1900, five years before one at Leysin.
What was the winter season like at Château-d'Œx in the 1920s?
In the winter of 1921–22 an English school, Eton House of Tonbridge, spent the season at the Hôtel Berthod at Château-d'Œx. Its principal's letters home describe three weeks of frost and no snow by early December, so the boys skated on a crowded rink. By January the Château-d'Œx ice hockey team had won the Caux Challenge Cup, and the Oxford Canadians played in the village on 2 January. There were horse races on the snow with skijöring, ski races for novices, skating competitions and ski jumping. In December 1924 a London weekly listed ski and toboggan races, a Venetian festival and international hockey matches at Château-d'Œx.