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

History of English Churches in Switzerland – Les Avants

On the afternoon of Sunday 22 July 1877, a small new chapel was opened at Les Avants, the mountain hamlet above Montreux. The Montreux paper had announced the inauguration for four o’clock. A Lausanne paper reported it the following week. The chapel was meant for French, German and English worship, it had a belfry, and it could hold about 120 people. It had been paid for entirely by voluntary subscriptions, on land given by the Dufour brothers, owners of the Grand Hôtel des Avants. Several French, German and English pastors attended what the Lausanne paper called a touching and modest ceremony, blessed with splendid weather.1 It is the chapel known today as St Peter’s, a name it was given after the Second World War.14

A hotel in the mountains

Les Avants had been a summer hamlet at nearly a thousand metres, a staging point on the route over the Col de Jaman. There were a few houses and an inn, opened in 1837 by Jean-Louis Dufour. A road arrived in 1852. In 1873 and 1874 his family built the Grand Hôtel, which they advertised as a first-class hotel “dans une situation incomparable, au milieu des montagnes”. It offered billiards, a telegraph and hot and cold baths, and from 1877 it stayed open all year, heated in winter, which was still rare at Montreux. Visitors came for the mountain air, for the grape cure, and soon for sledging, skating and skiing in winter. The architectural historian Dave Lüthi describes Les Avants as becoming the kingdom of the Dufour family.2

That is why an English church was wanted there. The Colonial and Continental Church Society put Les Avants on its list of chaplaincies in 1873. In the 1880s the local church press recorded Anglican services in summer “dans la chapelle des Avents”. In 1888 the Montreux paper described the new English church at Clarens. It noted that Les Avants already had “une chapelle servant aux cultes anglais et français”, a chapel for English and French services.3 Later accounts, including Schniewind and the chapel’s centenary in 1972, say that the Dufour brothers built it in 1872. The reports of 1877 are the earliest we have found.4

Chaplains for a season

For most of its history Les Avants had no resident chaplain. Each summer the Colonial and Continental Church Society sent out a clergyman from an English parish for a month at a time. The Revd W. J. Emery held the post in June 1896, and the Revd W. G. Kilpack, curate of Christ Church, Sutton, in July 1898. In the summer of 1913 it was the Venerable Archdeacon Fortin in July and then the Revd A. P. Cronyn, normally chaplain at Hyères. One man stayed longer: Hubert Brooke, later vicar of St Margaret’s, Brighton, recorded in Crockford’s that he had been chaplain at Les Avants from 1895 to 1897.5

The railway from Montreux reached Les Avants and was carried on over the pass to Montbovon in the autumn of 1903. Describing the journey, the Feuille d’avis de Lausanne noticed the chapels on either side of the new tunnel. The pretty Catholic chapel at Allières and the pretty Anglican chapel at Les Avants, the writer said, were made to pray to God together. They raised their modest little belfries, which seemed to make themselves very small against the mountains.6

The chapel was furnished by its English visitors. The carved wooden pulpit was given in 1893 by Baroness Ashtown, and the window at the east end of the chancel was paid for by an English family.7

The winter season at Les Avants had its skating competitions and, in January 1914, an international ice-hockey tournament. That story is told on our page Wintering on the Swiss Riviera and on What did the English do all winter?.

After the First World War the congregations were small. In 1923 a society chaplain wrote an account of his summer for The Record. The proprietors of the Grand Hôtel treated the society’s chaplains so generously, he wrote, that “they are counted as guests rather than visitors”. The church, “which stands in a corner of the hotel grounds, is very small, but at all times sufficiently large for those who attend”. In the two chief holiday months his congregation had run “from 5 to 24”, and “the great majority of the visitors are foreigners”. He thanked Mr Stibbs, “an Englishman resident in Les Avants”, for his support, and Miss Horsley, “who has made herself responsible for the choir”. The next autumn the Montreux visitors’ list shows the arrangement he described. Among the French, Dutch and Romanian guests at the Grand Hôtel were “Rev. & Mrs Hilton, Chaplain des Avants”.8

The school, and the rescue

In January 1927 Miss Dorothy Braginton opened an English girls’ school, Châtelard School, in a villa near Montreux. It grew quickly, and about ten years later, on the eve of the war, it moved up to Les Avants and into the Grand Hôtel. Its school chaplain was the chaplain of Christ Church, Clarens.9

The school wanted a chapel inside its own building, not the one in the grounds, and the Grand Hôtel company decided to pull the old chapel down. It was saved by the people of Les Avants and Montreux. On 15 December 1937 the Société de la Chapelle des Avants held its founding meeting at the Nouveau Collège in Montreux. The invitation in the local paper was addressed to all who cared about the religious and moral life of the village. On the Sunday before, Pastor Roth was to read out the new society’s statutes after the service at Les Avants.10

The society’s first thé-vente, in July 1938, was a success. Rain threatened, but a crowd came up from the neighbouring villages and from Montreux. The hamlet had gathered a great many things to sell and set up a pastry stall. There were games in the park, and the stalls were laid out in rooms lent by the management of Châtelard School. The village choir, the Echo de Jaman, sang. The paper thanked the society’s president, A. Tschumy, and “Mme Pétrie, présidente du Comité des Dames”.11

The money paid for the work. On 3 January 1939 the Journal de Montreux reported the result: the roof repaired, a new ceiling put in, the walls repainted, and electric heating installed that worked wonderfully. The chapel was now “un lieu de culte avenant et confortable, à l’usage — été et hiver — des quatre Communautés nationale, libre, anglaise et allemande”. It was dedicated again on Sunday 8 January 1939, with the pastors and congregations of all four churches taking part.12

St Peter’s and the angels from Caux

In 1941 the English chapel at Caux, built in 1905 and dedicated in 1906, was falling into disrepair. Many of the English had gone. In the presence of an English clergyman and of Pastor Roth, the people at Caux offered Les Avants any furnishings they could use before they were lost. On 27 August 1941 a carved altar and four carved angels were taken across the Baye de Montreux to Les Avants. Three years later the Caux chapel was handed to the Montreux parish, repaired, and saved after all.13

Mrs Violet M. Petrie, a founding member of the church committee, later wrote a history of the chapel from 1933 to 1959 in three languages. We have not found a copy. After the Second World War the chapel was given the name of St Peter, the same dedication as our own church at Château-d’Œx.14

Schniewind records that when Christ Church, Clarens, closed in 1968, the Anglican services at Les Avants stopped too. The local press gives a slightly different picture: in 1972 it reported that English and German services were still held there regularly, alongside Reformed services three Sundays a month. At Easter 1968 the chapel was given a second bell, cast at Aarau.15

In September 1972 the chapel’s centenary was marked with a special service. The 24 Heures described it as standing at the lower entrance to the village, where the path down the Chauderon gorge begins. Once it had stood in open fields; now there were houses round it. It had been renovated throughout, with its chancel, its small belfry and its porch with columns, and it could seat about a hundred. Inside were the Ashtown pulpit, the English window, “quatre anges en bois sculpté”, and a fine reading desk.16

The altar was too big for the chancel at Les Avants. In June 1980 it went back to Caux, and two of the angels went with it. In May 1981 the two congregations were to hold services of thanksgiving together, first at Caux and then at Les Avants.17

In 1981 the chapel still belonged, like the one at Caux, to an independent local association rather than to the commune. In 2003 the Société de la Chapelle des Avants was still holding its annual meeting after the Reformed service there. In June 2026 the Reformed churches’ news site Réformés.ch published an article on the chapel’s history.18

St Peter’s still stands at the lower end of Les Avants, where the path down the Chauderon gorge begins. When the local paper reported the division of the angels in April 1981, it showed one of the two that stayed, with the caption: “Celui-ci est resté aux Avants.” This one stayed at Les Avants.19

We would like to find Mrs Petrie’s history of the chapel, and to know more about the English families who furnished it. If you have papers, photographs or memories of St Peter’s, Les Avants, please write to us at info(a)stpeters.ch.

Related pages: The English churches in Switzerland · Wintering on the Swiss Riviera · Caux · Clarens · Glion · English schools in the Alps

  1. Feuille d’avis de Montreux, 18 July 1877, p. 1, advertisement “Inauguration de la Chapelle des Avants, Dimanche 22 juillet prochain, à 4 h. de l’après-midi” (Scriptorium item 506697, masthead read), and 21 July 1877, p. 4, services column, where the inauguration service is listed under the Église évangélique libre (item 506677); L’Estafette, 28 July 1877, p. 5, “Canton de Vaud” (item 96373), quoted in translation: “Plusieurs pasteurs français, allemands et anglais, assistaient à cette touchante et modeste cérémonie, favorisée par un temps splendide.” The Nouvelliste vaudois, 28 July 1877, p. 3 (item 112388), gives the same facts. ↩

  2. Dave Lüthi, “Les Avants, une station d’altitude” (2004), quoting the Grand Hôtel’s advertisement in Eugène Rambert et al., Montreux (Neuchâtel, 1877). Lüthi notes that the Dufour family papers, in the Archives de Montreux, have yet to be studied. ↩

  3. Paul W. Schniewind, Anglicans in Switzerland (Berne, 1992), p. 101; Le Semeur vaudois, 5 March 1886, p. 77 (item 681027), printed “Avents”; Feuille d’avis de Montreux, 5 April 1888, p. 4 (item 503687). ↩

  4. We have not found a contemporary source for the date of 1872, and the Grand Hôtel itself was built in 1873–74. The reports of July 1877 describe a chapel paid for by subscription on the Dufours’ land. A recent church article dates it to 1876. We give the 1877 opening as the firm date and leave the others as tradition. Schniewind, p. 101; “On va fêter le centenaire de la chapelle des Avants”, 24 Heures, 23 September 1972 (item 9287); Michel Vuillomenet, “Deux anges passent et les nuages s’estompent”, L’Est vaudois, 29 April 1981, p. 3 (item 231362), which also gives 1872; Lüthi (2004), for the Grand Hôtel in 1873–74; Anne Vallelian, Réformés.ch, 15 June 2026, quoted here from our Riviera page and not read again (“Construite en 1876 par la famille Dufour, propriétaire du Grand Hôtel récemment édifié”). Lüthi also writes that the Protestant and Anglican chapels provided regular services “dès 1877”. A chapel built in 1872 and replaced in 1877 is possible, but we have found no trace of one. ↩

  5. Bristol Times and Mirror, 2 June 1896, p. 6, reprinting The Times; The Record, 1 July 1898, p. 10; London Evening Standard, 3 July 1913, p. 11; The Record, 1 August 1913, p. 730: all read on the page image. Crockford’s Clerical Directory (1929), Brooke entry. Further names appear in the Society’s monthly lists, which we have not yet checked on the page. ↩

  6. Feuille d’avis de Lausanne, 30 September 1903, p. 8 (item 16602), translated: “La jolie chapelle catholique d’Allières et la jolie chapelle anglicane des Avants sont faites pour prier Dieu ensemble : elles élèvent de modestes clochetons qui semblent se faire tout petits dans le cadre sublime des cimes environnantes.” Lüthi dates the line’s arrival at Les Avants to 1901. ↩

  7. 24 Heures, 23 September 1972 (item 9287). The paper does not name the family. ↩

  8. “The Padre and His Flock”, The Record, 13 September 1923, p. 5 (British Newspaper Archive BL/0006265/19230913, art. 042), read on the page image; Journal et liste des étrangers de Montreux, 13 September 1924, p. 13 (item 429109), Grand Hôtel list. The Hiltons appear in the list every week from 13 September to 29 November 1924. ↩

  9. Journal de Montreux, 5 September 1964, p. 8 (item 439572), read on the page image; Schniewind, p. 59. Schniewind dates the school’s takeover of the hotel to 1938; the 1964 article has the move “dix ans après sa fondation”. ↩

  10. Schniewind, p. 101; Journal de Montreux, 11 December 1937, p. 7 (advertisement) and p. 9 (item 445071), translated: “tous ceux qui ont à cœur le développement religieux et moral de l’agglomération des Avants”. The 1981 article (note 4) says the chapel became the property of the local parishioners in 1937. ↩

  11. “Une bonne nouvelle des Avants”, Journal de Montreux, 28 July 1938, p. 5 (item 444788). ↩

  12. “Inauguration de la Chapelle des Avants”, Journal de Montreux, 3 January 1939, p. 5 (item 443787), translated. ↩

  13. Vuillomenet, L’Est vaudois, 29 April 1981, p. 3 (item 231362). The article names the English clergyman, but we have not been able to confirm who he was, so he is left unnamed here. ↩

  14. Schniewind, p. 101. The “Mme Pétrie” of 1938 was very probably Mrs Violet Petrie, but no source we have read joins the two. ↩↩

  15. Schniewind, p. 101; 24 Heures, 23 September 1972 (item 9287); Feuille d’avis de Lausanne, 16 April 1968, p. 25 (item 46470), “Aux Avants, du vin et des bricelets pour baptiser la nouvelle cloche”. That article says the old bell had rung “depuis 1844”, which cannot be right for this chapel and is not repeated here. ↩

  16. 24 Heures, 23 September 1972 (item 9287), translated: “à l’entrée des Avants, en aval, au départ du sentier des gorges du Chauderon”. ↩

  17. As note 13, and the same article’s summary on p. 1. The article says once that “l’autel et les quatre anges” crossed back in June 1980, but its headline, its opening, its account of the agreement and both photograph captions all say two angels, which is followed here. ↩

  18. L’Est vaudois, 29 April 1981 (item 231362); La Presse Riviera/Chablais, 15 March 2003, p. 14 (item 242936); Vallelian, Réformés.ch, 15 June 2026, quoted here from our Riviera page and not read again. Schniewind (p. 101) says the chapel belongs to the Reformed Church of Vaud; we have not been able to confirm who owns it today. ↩

  19. Vuillomenet, L’Est vaudois, 29 April 1981, p. 3 (item 231362), photograph caption, read on the page image; the caption continues: “Ce sont deux de ses « frères » qui ont été rendus à Caux.” ↩

Questions answered

Who built the English chapel at Les Avants?
The chapel at Les Avants was paid for entirely by voluntary subscriptions, on land given by the Dufour brothers, owners of the Grand Hôtel des Avants. It was opened on Sunday 22 July 1877 as a small chapel for French, German and English worship. Later accounts, including Schniewind and the chapel's centenary in 1972, say that the Dufour brothers built it in 1872; the reports of 1877 are the earliest found.
Did Les Avants have a resident English chaplain?
For most of its history the English chapel at Les Avants had no resident chaplain. Each summer the Colonial and Continental Church Society sent out a clergyman from an English parish for a month at a time. One man stayed longer: Hubert Brooke recorded in Crockford's that he had been chaplain at Les Avants from 1895 to 1897.
How was the chapel at Les Avants saved from demolition?
When Châtelard School moved into the Grand Hôtel at Les Avants, it wanted a chapel inside its own building, and the hotel company decided to pull the old chapel down. People at Les Avants and Montreux saved it. The Société de la Chapelle des Avants held its founding meeting on 15 December 1937. A thé-vente in July 1938 raised money. By January 1939 the roof had been repaired, a new ceiling put in, the walls repainted and electric heating installed. The chapel was dedicated again on 8 January 1939, for the use, summer and winter, of the national, free, English and German congregations.
What is the English chapel at Les Avants called?
The chapel at Les Avants is St Peter's. It was given the name of St Peter after the Second World War, the same dedication as St Peter's at Château-d'Œx. In 1981 it belonged to an independent local association rather than to the commune. In 2003 the Société de la Chapelle des Avants was still holding its annual meeting there after the Reformed service.
What happened to the altar and angels from Caux?
In 1941 the English chapel at Caux was falling into disrepair, and the people at Caux offered Les Avants any furnishings it could use. On 27 August 1941 a carved altar and four carved angels were taken from Caux to Les Avants. The altar was too big for the chancel at Les Avants, and in June 1980 it went back to Caux with two of the angels. Two angels stayed at Les Avants.