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

Where did the English send their children to school?

In November 1907 a small advertisement appeared in the visitors’ paper of Montreux. It was printed in English, between a hotel notice for Adelboden and a bank’s terms of deposit. The Revd E. Dudley Lampen, “Chaplain for Winter” at Château-d’Œx, offered to “receive two Pupils into his chalet or give tuition to boys whose parents intend passing the Winter in Château d’Oex”. He preferred boys of nine to fourteen, and would take none who were “very delicate” as boarders. He was advertising for pupils in the same paper that listed his services. British families were spending whole winters in the village, and their sons had to be taught by somebody.1

English schooling in Vaud began in this way, with clergymen taking boys into their own homes. Only much later did it become a matter of institutions, some of them housed in the grand hotels of the Belle Époque.

The chaplain as schoolmaster

The arrangement was already old by Lampen’s time. In 1845 the Revd G. E. Biber sent a questionnaire to every English church on the Continent. The chaplain at Vevey, the Revd Barry O’Meara Dean, described how his chaplaincy worked. Services were held in the church of St Martin in summer and in a room at the Hôtel des Trois-Couronnes in winter. In the same reply he noted that the minister “receives 4 pupils, between 7 and 14 years of age”. Sixty-two years later, Lampen was offering to take two boys of much the same age.2

The best-known pupil of such a household is also the hardest to pin down. At the end of December 1899, with the war in South Africa filling the news, several Vaud papers printed the same short recollection. General Kitchener, who had just defeated the Dervishes in the Sudan, had been in 1865 “l’élève de M. Bennett, pasteur anglais à Montreux”. This English clergyman kept a boarding school at the château de Rennaz, near Villeneuve, and Kitchener was then some twelve or thirteen years old. The paragraph added that a painter named Renkewitz had given him lessons, and that Renkewitz was still teaching at Montreux thirty-five years later. The papers were copying one another, however, so this is one report and not several.3

A better source followed in July 1902, in the week Kitchener came home from South Africa to an ovation at Paddington. The Feuille d’avis de Montreux published a history of the Château de Grand-Clos. This country house stood at the end of the little village of Rennaz, on the road from Villeneuve to Aigle. L. Poirier-Delay wrote it from the private archives of the notary Léon Perret, one of the owners. The house’s tenants are listed in order: the pretender Naundorff in 1837–38, then a proscribed family of French republicans in 1854–58. From 1864 to 1875 it was occupied by the boarding school of “Révérend Bennet, pasteur anglican”, whose pupils had included “celui qui est aujourd’hui Lord Kitchener”.4

This account comes from a notary’s family papers, not from one newspaper copying another. It gives the school a house and an eleven-year life. It is also the only source we have found that calls the clergyman Anglican. His name appears as both Bennett and Bennet, and nothing we have found settles which is right. Nor have we found any record of Kitchener’s schooling in Switzerland from outside Vaud.5

Swiss schools for foreign girls

Most of the private schools on the Belle Époque Riviera were not English at all. In September 1905 the Journal et liste des étrangers de Montreux, de Vevey printed its page of “Renseignements et adresses diverses”. This was the district’s standing directory of doctors, chaplains, pharmacies and everything else a foreign resident might need. It listed thirteen private schools under three headings, and only one of them, the Marlburia English Boys’ School, was named as English. The largest group was the institutions de demoiselles, boarding schools for young ladies. These were Swiss houses selling French, music and accomplishments to foreign girls, and British families were among their customers rather than their owners.6

The same page lists F. A. Hake as “professeur d’anglais au collège de Vevey et à l’école supérieure”. He appears among the English at Montreux from 1900, and by 1905 he was teaching in the Swiss schools.7

Some of those Swiss houses lasted a long time, under changing names. “Des Essarts” was already advertising in the same paper in October 1892, as a “Pensionnat et Externat” and an “Institution française de demoiselles. Fondée en 1874.” It was run by M. des Essarts from the Campagne de l’Abri at Bon-Port.8 When a Montreux paper published a teacher’s obituary in May 1961, it placed her career by the school’s later names. She had taught “au Pensionnat des Essarts, devenu depuis … Fisher, c’est-à-dire l’actuel Monte-Rosa”. A Swiss school could thus carry three names in less than a century.9

The Misses Nash, at Belle Vue

The 1905 directory covered the Montreux district, down by the lake. The mountain villages above it kept their own company, and one of them had an English girls’ school that the directory never mentions. Through the autumn of 1909 and into the following January, an advertisement ran week after week in the Homeward Mail from India, China and the East. This was the London paper read by families with a life in India. It offered a “GIRLS’ SCHOOL under English management” at Château-d’Œx, a “Comfortable English Home with thorough education and attention to health”. There were languages and music, resident French and German governesses, and a few vacancies. Prospectuses were to be had from “the Misses Nash, Belle Vue, Chateau d’Oex, Switzerland”.10

The school also offered to arrange an escort from London. That was a service for parents who were not in Europe at all, and who might not see their daughter again for a year or more. The same notice appeared on at least seven Saturdays between October 1909 and January 1910, most of them in succession. The Montreux pensionnats sold French to girls whose families were in Britain. The Misses Nash sold an English home, in English, to families serving the Empire. Who they were, when their school opened or closed, and which house Belle Vue was, we have not been able to discover.10

A school that came for one winter

In September 1921 two Kent newspapers told their readers that a local school was going abroad. The Revd J. Le Fleming was “removing his family and pupils to the Hotel Berthod, Chateau d’Oex, Switzerland” while Eton House at Tonbridge was enlarged. Study there would be conducted exactly the same as at home. The party was to leave on 17 September and would be away six months. Eton House was an army crammer, preparing candidates for commissions. Rather than lose two terms while its buildings were enlarged, it moved the whole establishment to a Swiss hotel for the winter.11

The Hôtel Berthod had housed the English club of February 1895 in its billiard room, in the first winter it ever opened. A quarter of a century later it took in an English school, and it appears again on our page about the clubs and the winter season. Paul Schniewind’s history of the Anglican chaplaincies records that the winter colony of 1921–22 “increased by 40 from Tonbridge school”. He does not say which school he meant, and Eton House is the likeliest.12

Le Fleming wrote home through the winter and the Tonbridge Free Press printed his letters. They are the only first-hand English account of life in the village at this time that we have found. His first impressions appeared on 14 October. The beauty of the scenery impressed at once, he wrote, and all was still bright green. There was “scarcely a trace of autumn”, he added, “except for the occasional chilly evenings”.13

In November the school had a death to mark. John Le Fleming had founded Eton House at Tonbridge in 1865, and he died that month while the school was in Switzerland. At noon on the Saturday the whole establishment attended a memorial service in the village. It was taken by the chaplain of St Peter’s, the Revd Francis Hamilton, who had been at school at Tonbridge himself. He spoke of Le Fleming’s life and character, and of the service going on at that moment in Tonbridge, “the town he loved so well”. A portion of the burial service was read and “For all the Saints” was sung. All the members and masters of Eton House were there, with “several friends—Swiss, French, and English”.14

Le Fleming’s letter of 5 December began with another act of remembrance. On 11 November some 150 people had attended a service in the village for relations and friends fallen in the Great War. Afterwards the whole English colony walked up to the cemetery. They laid wreaths on the graves of eleven British soldiers who had died at Château-d’Œx while interned as prisoners of war. In the week before he wrote, those bodies had been “exhumed and conveyed to a central burying ground for all British interned prisoners at Vevey”. The removal was “by no means to the liking of the people of Chateau d’Oex, who wished to keep among them the bodies of the dead heroes whom they had welcomed so gladly and tended so carefully during the war”.15

The rest of the letter describes a schoolboy winter. Eton House had played three football matches against Château-d’Œx F.C. and finished level. In the first they were without Wyatt, Gage and Young, who had gone home for the Army examination. There had been a frost every night for three weeks and no snow, so the boys skated. All of them were past the beginners’ stage and busy at “elementary figure skating and ice hockey”. English people had come up in numbers lately, Le Fleming thought, and the rink was crowded, “too much so for comfort”.15

In February 1922 Le Progrès de Château-d’Œx reported that the village’s second team had beaten “l’équipe de l’École anglaise” by three goals to two after extra time. Eton House was still in the village and playing the local side that winter, so it may have been its team.16 The alterations at Tonbridge were finished on time. The school returned home on 1 April 1922, after what the paper called its six months’ residence at Château-d’Œx, and resumed work the following Wednesday.17

The English build their own

After the war the English began to found schools of their own. An English Preparatory School was listed at Glion in April 1923. By 1927 it was advertising for boys of seven to fourteen, boarding and day, under its headmaster Capt. W. E. Mocatta.18

Château-d’Œx had an English school of its own by then. In March 1924, two years after Eton House had gone home, the Journal de Château-d’Œx carried a small advertisement: “On demande à acheter une poussette. S’adresser École anglaise Ch.-d’Œx.” The English School wanted to buy a pram.19 In February 1929 Le Progrès described a new ski race at Château-d’Œx. It was run on the Swiss army’s patrol system, “entre les troupes d’éclaireurs anglais en Suisse”, between the English scout troops in Switzerland. The first Château-d’Œx troop won. The patrol of the École anglaise de Glion came second, four-fifths of a second behind, and a third team came from Château Riant in Geneva. They raced for a silver challenge cup presented by Capt. E. Mocatta of Glion, on the balance of the evidence the Glion headmaster. The paper hoped the race would become an annual event, with jumping and a slalom added.20 The sports train that season had been arranged by the committee of the “Visitor’s Ski-Club”, the partner of the Château-d’Œx Visitors Curling Club.21 Schniewind records that three English schools and a college for young men were spoken of at Château-d’Œx in the summer of 1932. About two hundred British residents remained there, despite the Depression, but no name for any of these schools has survived in the papers we can search.22

On the Riviera the change can be dated. Schniewind records that two English girls’ public schools were founded in the district in 1927, St George’s at Clarens and Châtelard School, later at Les Avants.23 Châtelard announced its opening in the Messager de Montreux on Tuesday 18 January 1927, in English. It would open on 20 January at the Villa Quisisana, Montreux, and the Head Mistress, Miss D. Braginton, M.A. Cambridge, would see parents on the two days before.24 St George’s was already running in 1927. In October 1928 the Feuille d’avis de Montreux reprinted the constitution of the company behind it, “L. V. Southwell, O. M. Potts et Cie, Ecole Saint-Georges”, of the Rue du Torrent, Clarens. Lorna-Violet Southwell of Clarens and Osyth-Mary Potts of Purley took unlimited liability. Five other women joined them as sleeping partners, putting in between 12,500 and 25,000 francs each, some eighty-one thousand francs in all. All seven were “toutes de nationalité anglaise”.25

There was an English college at Villeneuve too. On 2 May 1931 the Liste des étrangers de Montreux et environs printed, among the residents of private houses, an entry headed “Chillon College, Villeneuve (Vaud)”. It runs to seventeen names, led by Mr Alexander Pym, M.A. Cantab., and Mrs Pym. Twelve have an Oxford or Cambridge degree printed after the name.26 The château de Rennaz, where an English clergyman had kept his handful of boys in the 1860s, stood near the same town. The Glion school appears in the same list, with Capt. Mocatta at the head of a staff of six.18

Schools and their chaplains

The new schools did not bring their own clergy. They drew on the Anglican churches already standing at Montreux and Clarens. Schniewind records that “St George’s had regularly the chaplain of St John’s as its school chaplain and Châtelard the chaplain of Christ Church, Clarens.” The chaplain at Clarens “was responsible for several schools in the region”, so the schools were part of the job.23 A joint carol service of the English schools began in 1927, the year the two girls’ schools were founded.27

By then the schools were shaping the congregations. In December 1926 a report of an Advent service at Lausanne recalled that it had once been called “the town of the forty Colonels”. It had changed: “The Colonels have nearly all gone. It might now be said Lausanne is the town of ‘four times forty schools’.”28 That year Bishop Staunton Batty explained why the chaplaincy at Berne was so hard to sustain. Berne had “neither English residents (as in Montreux and Château d’Oex), nor schools (as in Lausanne and Geneva), and therefore little out of which to form a core or steady nucleus of a church community”.29 Residents and schools were the two foundations on which an Anglican congregation in Switzerland could be built.

The traffic ran both ways. When Mr Grier, the chaplain of St John’s, left in 1936 to be Dean of St Ninian’s Cathedral, Perth, he was remembered for “his long experience as a headmaster”. That experience had “enabled him to do such successful school work in the district”.30 In the same year at Lausanne, Ms D. M. Ruey, President of the Association of the Girls’ Schools, wrote to the church about the next chaplain. He should be “a definite Churchman”, with “some experience in educational work”, who would “approach the headmistresses and ask for access to the children”. The chaplain there had already begun “a regular series of talks on religion in all the schools of any size”. The first term’s subject was “The Origin of Religion”, and the second’s “Problems of Conduct”.31

The chapel at Les Avants

Châtelard soon outgrew the Villa Quisisana and moved to Chamby, into the former Hôtel des Narcisses. “Dix ans après sa fondation” it outgrew Chamby too, and went up to Les Avants, where the Grand Hotel was still to be had. “C’était à la veille de la guerre.”32

The Grand Hotel at Les Avants had an Anglican chapel in its grounds, built for its English guests. When the school took over the hotel in 1938, it chose not to take on the chapel, since it preferred one of its own inside the building. The hotel company then resolved to pull the old chapel down. A group of Swiss well-wishers saved it. They formed the Société de la Chapelle des Avants, called for subscriptions and bought the land. The society’s first thé-vente, in July 1938, paid for the first repairs, and it was held in rooms lent by the management of the Châtelard School.33

After the Second World War the chapel was given a name it had never had before: St Peter. It is also the dedication of the church at Château-d’Œx, and of this parish.

What became of them

From 1939 to 1947 Châtelard moved to England, and it returned to Les Avants “quand l’Europe eut retrouvé son équilibre”. After that it took “de nombreuses volées de 200 à 220 jeunes filles, appartenant en général à la bonne société anglaise, et parmi lesquelles il s’est trouvé plus d’une princesse”. They were aged nine to eighteen, and worked towards the General Certificate of Education at O and A Level. In September 1964 the Journal de Montreux described the district’s private schools. It was clear about what kind of place Châtelard was: “C’est une école anglaise, où l’enseignement est donné dans la langue de Shakespeare.” It also took girls of other nationalities who wanted an introduction to British culture. It ran for no profit, and everything it earned went back into the teaching and the buildings, a principle the paper attributes to the foundress.32

The same survey visited Le Mesnil at Bon-Port, an institute founded by Mme H. Alardo-Brasseur. The paper said it was reserved to “une certaine aristocratie du sang, de l’argent ou du grade”. The directress described it as “la dernière étape de la jeunesse avant leur mariage”. Its eighty-five or so girls came from Ecuador, the Congo, Rhodesia, Guatemala and Turkey, with “sept Suissesses pourtant”. These were an international elite, not a British one. The English school on that page was Châtelard, and it taught for British examinations.34

The link with the churches lasted as long as the congregations did. In Advent 1962 Aiglon College from Villars and Châtelard School from Les Avants combined for the joint carol service. They filled St John’s, Montreux, “to overflowing, including the gallery”, and the Presbyterian minister of the Scots Kirk at Lausanne preached.27 Christ Church, Clarens closed in 1968.35 When the Anglican services at Les Avants stopped we have not been able to establish. At Leysin the schools outlasted the church. By the early 1990s there were American schools there with more than a thousand students between them, and no Anglican chaplain had been found since 1980.36

Châtelard itself closed at the end of 1975. On 30 September L’Est Vaudois put the news on its front page, under “Un coup très dur pour Les Avants” and “CHÂTELARD SCHOOL FERME SES PORTES”. The president of the village’s interest society called it “une catastrophe”. Neil H. Green, president of the school’s foundation, explained what had happened. There had been 170 pupils in 1973, 150 the following year, and now “à peine plus de 100”. He named three causes. The first was the world recession. The second was “la surévaluation de fait du franc suisse”, which in five years had pushed fees up “de 80 pour cent en livres sterling et de 60 pour cent en dollars”. The third was the decline of the British economy. The administrators noted, too, that the school’s own statutes were no longer being met, with “moins de 50 pour cent d’élèves de nationalité britannique”. As Green put it, “la concurrence des écoles anglaises est donc désormais et pour longtemps trop forte.”37

We would like to know more about these schools, and especially about the English schools of Château-d’Œx. If you were at one of them, or have letters, photographs or prospectuses from them, 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), and the item numbers are theirs. The Tonbridge and Indian papers were read at the British Newspaper Archive.

  1. Journal et liste des étrangers de Montreux, de Vevey, 2 November 1907, p. 14 (Scriptorium, Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire de Lausanne, item 429328), read on the page image. The advertisement’s full wording: “Château d’Oex — Tuition. The Rev. E. Dudley Lampen M.A. Cantab: Chaplain for Winter will receive two Pupils into his chalet or give tuition to boys whose parents intend passing the Winter in Château d’Oex. Excellent climate. Boys ages 9–14 preferred. None very delicate taken as boarders. Address: Châlet le Verger.” Lampen’s title here is “Chaplain for Winter”, a seasonal post; he had been at Clarens in 1900–01, and our heritage page has him as chaplain of Château-d’Œx from 1913. The three should not be flattened into one appointment. ↩

  2. Paul Schniewind, Anglicans in Switzerland, Past and Present (1992), p. 53, quoting the reply of the Revd Barry O’Meara Dean to the Revd G. E. Biber’s questionnaire of 1845. Dean had been appointed the year before. ↩

  3. The five printings, all within ten days: La Revue, Lausanne, 28 December 1899 (item 144375); Tribune de Lausanne et Estafette, 28 December 1899 (item 49931); Feuille d’avis de Vevey, 28 December 1899 (item 201801); Feuille d’avis du district d’Aigle, 3 January 1900 (item 337646); Journal et liste des étrangers de Montreux, 6 January 1900, p. 5 (item 397965), read on the page image, which is the wording quoted here and the source of the age and of Renkewitz. It runs under the heading “Souvenir” and opens “on nous rappelle que le général Kitchener qui vient de détruire les derviches au Soudan était, en 1865, l’élève de M. Bennett, pasteur anglais à Montreux et qui tenait un pensionnat au château de Rennaz, près Villeneuve.” The words on nous rappelle, “we are reminded”, mark the item as repeated rather than reported. Two of the five name the Feuille d’avis de Montreux as their source, and that issue is not reachable in the digitised corpus. ↩

  4. Feuille d’avis de Montreux, 14 July 1902, p. 4 (item 457776), read on the page image. The feature is signed L. Poirier-Delay and opens by thanking the notary Léon Perret, co-proprietor of the Grand Clos estate, for the historical information, “extraits de leurs archives particulières”. It places the house “à l’extrémité du petit village de Rennaz, sur la route de Villeneuve à Aigle”. The full sentence reads: “De 1864 à 1875, il fut occupé par le pensionnat du Révérend Bennet, pasteur anglican, qui compta au nombre de ses élèves celui qui est aujourd’hui Lord Kitchener, commandant en chef des troupes anglaises dans l’Afrique du Sud.” The same page carries the telegrams of Kitchener’s return, which is presumably why the local history ran that week. ↩

  5. Bennett appears in four of the five press printings; Bennet in the Aigle paper and in the 1902 estate history, where it was read at high magnification on the image. No source has been found that settles the spelling. ↩

  6. Journal et liste des étrangers de Montreux, de Vevey, 9 September 1905 (item 429715), the “Renseignements et adresses diverses” page, read in full on the page image. No date is printed on that page; the date given is the archive catalogue’s. The thirteen, as printed. Under Écoles particulières: Mlle Cardinaux at Clarens, the Marlburia English Boys’ School, and Mlle Mattei. Under Institutions de demoiselles et externats: Mme Dupraz at Clarens, “Des Essarts, Territet (Pens. demois.)”, Mme Hélène Guenther, La Printanière, Mme Rollier, Mlle A. Supplitt at Territet, and Mlles Vincent. Under Pensionnats: Mme Peytrequin, Mlle Guenther and Mlle E. Drapel. The name of the boys’ school is difficult: at full-page resolution it reads Marlburia, and the same word appears as a plain postal address, “S’adresser à Marlburia, Bon-Port”, in a classified of 9 July 1898 (item 448970). A close reading of the directory glyph alone leaves it genuinely ambiguous. ↩

  7. The same directory page, under Professeurs. Hake appears in the Montreux colony’s records from 1900. ↩

  8. Journal et liste des étrangers de Montreux et environs, 1 October 1892, p. 6 (item 397880), read on the page image. The notice in full: “Pensionnat et Externat des Essarts — Institution française de demoiselles. Fondée en 1874. Prospectus et références à disposition. S’adresser à M. des ESSARTS, Campagne de l’Abri, Bon-Port.” No date is printed on that page either. The 1892 address is the Campagne de l’Abri at Bon-Port; the 1905 directory gives Territet. Both are Montreux-district localities, and the school may have moved between the two. ↩

  9. Journal de Montreux, 12 May 1961, p. 11 (item 443372), the obituary of Mme Virginie Frey. The word immediately before “Fisher” is cut off in the image, which is why the quotation carries an ellipsis rather than a reconstruction. This is a single witness, and the claim is the paper’s rather than ours. ↩

  10. Homeward Mail from India, China and the East, 15 January 1910, p. 30 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0001712/19100115, art. 106), read on the page image, which is the wording quoted here. The archive’s index shows the same advertisement in that paper on 23 October, 13, 20 and 27 November and 18 December 1909, and on 1 and 15 January 1910: seven insertions at least, most of them weekly. The earliest of them, 23 October 1909, p. 30, was also read on the page image and carries the same text and the same address. ↩↩

  11. Kent & Sussex Courier, 2 September 1921, p. 7 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0000483/19210902, art. 136), read on the page image. The same paragraph ran in the Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser of the same day. Neither paper gives the clergyman’s denomination or his full name; the dispatches of January and April 1922 print him as John Le Fleming. ↩

  12. Schniewind, p. 79, for the winter colony of 1921–22. The Vaud press does not corroborate him: a search of the Vaud press for Tonbridge across 1918–1945 returns guest-list entries giving Tonbridge as a home town, one of them for a Mrs John Le Fleming, but no report of the school. Whether Schniewind meant Eton House or Tonbridge School, which is a different and much older foundation in the same town, he does not say. ↩

  13. Tonbridge Free Press, 14 October 1921, p. 6 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0004173/19211014, art. 056), read on the page image. The same column carries the announcement that Eton House “with its pupils and staff, has been transferred to the Hotel Berthod, Chateau d’Oex, Switzerland, where the work of preparing officers for the Army will be carried on until April”. ↩

  14. “Memorial Service in Switzerland”, Tonbridge Free Press, 25 November 1921, p. 2 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0004173/19211125, art. 009), read on the page image. The paper appeared on the Friday, so the Saturday it describes was 19 November 1921. It names the founder as John Le Fleming; the principal who took the school to Switzerland is also styled J. or John Le Fleming in these columns, and nothing we have read states the relationship between them. For the founding of Eton House in 1865, Kent & Sussex Courier, 18 November 1921, p. 10, which has not been read on the page image. ↩

  15. Tonbridge Free Press, 16 December 1921, p. 3 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0004173/19211216, art. 031), read on the page image across two crops. The letter is dated at Château-d’Œx on 5 December 1921. Everything quoted in these two paragraphs, including the football and the skating, is from it. The count of eleven graves is the writer’s own, made standing at them. ↩↩

  16. Le Progrès de Château-d’Œx, 28 February 1922 (item 470338), read on the page image. The report calls the side only “l’équipe de l’École anglaise” and gives the school no other name. ↩

  17. Tonbridge Free Press, 21 April 1922, p. 5 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0004173/19220421, art. 056), read on the page image. Two consecutive paragraphs in a column of local notes. ↩

  18. Journal et liste des étrangers, 21 April 1923, p. 12 (item 428749). The school also advertised in the Instituts et Pensionnats pages of October 1927 and July 1928 as “Glion sur Montreux — English Preparatory School, boarding and day, boys 7–14, Headmaster Capt. W. E. Mocatta, B.A. Oxon.” The degree is given as B.A. there and as M.A. in 1931. The 1931 entry is in the list cited at note 26, headed “Glion sur Territet, English Preparatory School”, with six names: Capt. W. E. Mocatta, M.A. (Oxon.) and Mrs Mocatta, Mr K. W. Bramley, Mr J. E. Smith Wright, Mr W. S. Ellaby and Miss M. Westcott. ↩↩

  19. Journal de Château-d’Œx, 12 March 1924 (item 473028), read on the page image. It gives the school no other name. ↩

  20. Le Progrès, Château-d’Œx, 27 February 1929, p. 3 (item 476668), read in full on the page image. The cup’s donor is printed as “cap. E. Mocatta, de Glion” and the 1931 visitors’ list has “Capt. W. E. Mocatta”. The initials differ, and the identification rests on the balance of the evidence rather than on a document. ↩

  21. The same page of Le Progrès, under Communiqués. The curling club appears on our page about the clubs and the winter season. ↩

  22. Schniewind, p. 80, for 1932. The two press items at notes 16 and 19 are independent of each other and of Schniewind. None of them gives the school a name. ↩

  23. Schniewind, pp. 59 and 103. His words are that “in 1927 two English girls’ public schools were founded in the district: St George’s College at Clarens and Châtelard School at Les Avants”. His placing of Châtelard’s 1927 foundation at Les Avants does not agree with the opening advertisement at note 24 or the 1964 newspaper account at note 32, which put the first premises at Montreux. ↩↩

  24. Messager de Montreux, 18 January 1927, p. 4 (item 464975), read on the page image, masthead and catalogue date agreeing. The advertisement in full: “Châtelard-School for Girls. Villa Quisisana, Montreux. Opening: January 20th 1927. The Head Mistress: Miss D. Braginton, M.A. Cambridge, will see parents between 2 and 4.30 on Tuesday & Wednesday January 18th and 19th, or at other times by appointment.” The Villa Quisisana stood at Les Colondalles, which the papers spell with one l and with two. ↩

  25. Feuille d’avis de Montreux, 29 October 1928, p. 2 (item 451279), read on the page image, reprinting the Feuille officielle suisse du Commerce. The sleeping partners were Ethel-Florence Southwell at Glion (fr. 18,750), Constance-Rosamond-Alers Hankey at Buckfastleigh (fr. 25,000), and Mary-Venton Gibson in London, Helen-Mary Beale at East Grinstead and Evelyn-Madeline Sellar at Chilworth (fr. 12,500 each). The printer sets “Agleterre” against Helen-Mary Beale’s name, reproduced here as printed. This is a company registration and not the school’s foundation: the school was already advertising in October 1927 with Miss L. V. Southwell as warden, and Schniewind dates the foundation to 1927. ↩

  26. Journal et liste des étrangers de Montreux-Vevey, 2 May 1931, printed p. 28 (item 428832), read on the page image. The seventeen names, as printed: Mr Alexander Pym, M.A. Cantab., and Mrs Pym; Miss Simpson, Mlle O. Goldschmith, Mme Ducamp and Miss Hodges; and Messrs Hett, Thresher, Airy, Moss-Blundell, Roberts, Bett, Clark, Markham, Gibson, Riley and Stuart. The list gives the staff in residence. It is not a foundation date, a pupil roll or a curriculum, and nothing about the school’s size or standing should be read into it beyond the names and degrees printed. ↩

  27. Schniewind, p. 59. The preacher in 1962 was the Revd W. A. Wylie of the Scots Kirk, Lausanne. ↩↩

  28. Schniewind, pp. 49–50, reporting an Advent service of 12 December 1926. ↩

  29. Schniewind, p. 65, from Bishop B. Staunton Batty’s first visitation of 1926. ↩

  30. Schniewind, p. 59. ↩

  31. Schniewind, pp. 49–50, quoting Ms Ruey’s letter of 27 July 1936 and the chaplain’s own report. ↩

  32. Journal de Montreux, 5 September 1964, p. 8 (item 439572), read in full on the page image, masthead and catalogue date agreeing. The paper’s “dix ans après sa fondation” puts the move up to Les Avants in 1937, where Schniewind dates the takeover of the Grand Hotel to 1938. A move in one year and a purchase in the next are compatible, and neither account is preferred here. ↩↩

  33. Schniewind, p. 101, for the school’s arrival, the demolition decision and the rescue. He dates the chapel itself to 1872 and names the Dufour brothers, proprietors of the Grand Hotel, as its builders; the earliest contemporary report of the chapel we have found is of its opening in July 1877, so its date is not settled. The thé-vente is reported in the Journal de Montreux, 28 July 1938, p. 5 (item 444788): the stalls stood “dans les salles aimablement mises à disposition par la direction du Châtelard School”, and the takings meant “les premières réparations pourront donc être commencées dès l’automne”. ↩

  34. Journal de Montreux, 5 September 1964, p. 8 (item 439572), as note 32. The directress’s words in full: “notre institut est pour elles la dernière étape de la jeunesse avant leur mariage”. ↩

  35. The services at Christ Church, Clarens were still being advertised on 26 October 1968 (Journal de Montreux, item 446635) and are absent from the same weekly column a week later (2 November 1968, item 446759). Schniewind, p. 60, gives October 1968. ↩

  36. Schniewind, p. 106, writing in 1992. ↩

  37. L’Est Vaudois, 30 September 1975, front page (item 229564), read on the page image, masthead and catalogue date agreeing. The report says the school will close “à la fin de cette année”, and the photograph caption “dans trois mois”, which put the closure at the end of December 1975. The village official quoted first is M. Pierre Aubord, president of the Société des intérêts des Avants, whose words were “C’est une catastrophe”. The effective overvaluation of the franc is the paper’s phrase; it is the strength of the Swiss currency, not a fall in the pound, that the report describes. ↩

Questions answered

Were there English boarding schools in Switzerland?
Yes. In the Canton of Vaud they stood on the Montreux Riviera and in the mountain villages above it. English schooling there began with clergymen taking pupils into their own homes, and only later became a matter of institutions. After the First World War the English founded schools of their own. An English Preparatory School at Glion took boys as boarders and day pupils. In 1927 two English girls' schools were founded in the district, St George's at Clarens and Châtelard School.
Why did British parents send their children to school in Switzerland?
Many of them were already there. British families spent whole winters at Château-d'Œx, and their children had to be taught by somebody on the spot. In November 1907 the winter chaplain there, the Revd E. Dudley Lampen, advertised that he would take two pupils into his chalet. Other parents were far away. In 1909 and 1910 the Misses Nash advertised their girls' school at Belle Vue, Château-d'Œx, in a London paper read by families with a life in India. The school offered to arrange an escort from London. Families in Britain also bought French. In 1905 most private schools on the Montreux Riviera were Swiss houses selling French, music and accomplishments to foreign girls.
Did Anglican chaplains run schools in Switzerland?
Some taught pupils and took boarders. In 1845 the chaplain at Vevey, the Revd Barry O'Meara Dean, reported that he received four pupils between seven and fourteen years of age. From 1864 to 1875 the Reverend Bennet, an Anglican clergyman, kept a boarding school at the Château de Grand-Clos at Rennaz, near Villeneuve. In 1907 the winter chaplain of Château-d'Œx offered to take two boys into his chalet. Later the chaplains served the new English schools. The chaplain of St John's, Montreux, was school chaplain to St George's, Clarens, and the chaplain of Christ Church, Clarens, to Châtelard School.
Did a whole English school ever move to Switzerland?
One did, for a winter. In September 1921 two Kent papers reported that the Revd J. Le Fleming was taking his family and the pupils of Eton House, Tonbridge, to the Hotel Berthod at Château-d'Œx. Eton House was an army crammer, preparing candidates for commissions, and its buildings were being enlarged. The school spent the winter at Château-d'Œx and returned home on 1 April 1922. Le Fleming's letters, printed in the Tonbridge Free Press, describe football against the village team, skating, and the remembrance service of 11 November 1921.
Was Lord Kitchener educated in Switzerland?
The Vaud press said so, and a better source agrees. Five Vaud papers of December 1899 and January 1900 recalled that in 1865, aged about twelve or thirteen, Kitchener had been a pupil of an English clergyman at Montreux. The clergyman kept a boarding school at the château de Rennaz, near Villeneuve. The papers were copying one another, so this is one report. In July 1902 the Feuille d'avis de Montreux published a history of the house, the Château de Grand-Clos. It was written from the private archives of the notary Léon Perret, one of its owners. It records that from 1864 to 1875 the house held the boarding school of the Reverend Bennet, an Anglican clergyman, whose pupils had included Lord Kitchener. The name is spelled both Bennett and Bennet in the sources. No record of Kitchener's schooling in Switzerland has been found outside Vaud.
Why did Châtelard School at Les Avants close?
Châtelard School at Les Avants closed at the end of 1975. L'Est Vaudois reported the decision on 30 September 1975. Neil H. Green, president of the school's foundation, named three causes: the world recession, the effective overvaluation of the Swiss franc, and the decline of the British economy. In five years the franc had pushed fees up by 80 per cent in sterling and 60 per cent in dollars. Pupil numbers had fallen from 170 in 1973 to barely more than 100. Fewer than half the pupils were now British, so the school's own statutes were no longer being met.
Who founded St George's School at Clarens?
St George's School at Clarens was founded in 1927, the date given by Paul Schniewind's history of the Anglican chaplaincies in Switzerland. It was advertising in October 1927 with Miss L. V. Southwell as warden. In October 1928 the Feuille d'avis de Montreux reprinted the constitution of the company behind it, L. V. Southwell, O. M. Potts et Cie, École Saint-Georges, of the Rue du Torrent, Clarens. Lorna-Violet Southwell of Clarens and Osyth-Mary Potts of Purley took unlimited liability. Five other women joined them as sleeping partners, putting in between 12,500 and 25,000 francs each. All seven were English.
What happened to the English chapel at Les Avants?
The English chapel at Les Avants stood in the grounds of the Grand Hotel. When Châtelard School took over the hotel in 1938, it preferred a chapel of its own inside the building, and the hotel company resolved to pull the old chapel down. A group of Swiss well-wishers saved it. They formed the Société de la Chapelle des Avants, called for subscriptions and bought the land. After the Second World War the chapel was given the name of St Peter, which is also the dedication of the church at Château-d'Œx.