How it all began
The History of the Twinning Association
March 2025
Louise Hooper, Chair, Eden Twinning, writes:
Etienne Rousseau, one of the founder members of the Edenbridge-Mont Saint Aignan Twinning, explains below the historical links between Mont Saint Aignan and Thomas a Becket, Henry II’s Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury.
When Thomas a Becket was exiled to France he stayed at the leper hospital near Abbaye Saint Gervais, Mont aux Malades, Mont Saint Aignan. On his return to Canterbury, Thomas a Becket nominated the first vicar of Penshurst just two days before he was assassinated on the orders of Henry in December 1170.
800 years later, in 1970, Canterbury Cathedral celebrated the 800th anniversary of Thomas a Becket’s death ; the rector of Penshurst celebrated the 800th anniversary of Penshurst Church with a Penshurst Festival.
The 1970 Penshurst Festival included the Penshurst Choral Society travelling to Mont Saint Aignan to sing and perform, a pilgrimmage from Penshurst to Canterbury by 30 parishioners, a pageant, a new ‘Becket’ window by renowned stained glass artist Laurence Lee, concerts, a tapestry dedicated to St Luke stitched by Penshurst GP Doctor Wood and six new affordable homes for young local families called Becket’s Field. Guests were invited from Mont Saint Aignan.
The twinning between Edenbridge and Mont Saint Aignan was adopted with a signed charter in 1983, and the 50th anniversary of their twinning was celebrated in 2023. Although the Edenbridge and District Twinning Association was formally closed in 2023, the towns of Edenbridge and Mont Saint Aignan remain twinned. Eden Twinning was set up in 2023 and aims to create and continue the cultural links between the two communities.
April 2013 and October 2023
Etienne Rousseau writes:
A leper hospital was installed on one of the hills overlooking Rouen after the First Crusade (1096-1099), and the hill then came to be known as the Mont aux Malades. The leper hospital was part of a priory run by monks, and a small village developed along the road. The only remains of that establishment is the open nave of the priory church, the small ‘église Saint Jacques’ which was sold to a private owner as a ‘bien national’ during the French Revolution.
The Abbaye Saint Gervais stood at the foot of our Mont aux Malades, a convenient place for the King-Duke to stay with his retinue when he came to Rouen. Then Thomas à Becket, Henry II’s chancellor, never failed to visit his friend at the leper hospital, Prior Nicolas, approximately one and a half mile uphill from Saint Gervais.
Henry II’s disagreement with Thomas à Becket when he became the archbishop of Canterbury resulted in the latter’s exile in France. We know that Prior Nicolas wrote at least two letters to the king in order to reconcile the two men with each other. Afer his return to Canterbury and two days before he was assassinated in December 1170, Thomas nominated one Wilhelmus as the first known vicar of Penshurst.
Rouen was besieged by the king of France, Louis VII, in 1174, and King Henry II of course ran to the rescue of his Duchy’s capital city. He stopped his army on the hill of Mont aux Malades for a night’s rest before taking action. The siege was raised during the night and the city was free again the next morning. As he still sought forgiveness for having had Thomas killed, Henry immediately declared that he owed the withdrawal of the French troops to the protection of Saint Thomas and he granted the sum of £ 40 for the priory to build a new church dedicated to Saint-Thomas-the-Martyr. The church was built and the old priory church was given over to the small parish until it was sold during the French Revolution and turned into a barn, a cart shed, and finally a stage for a youth club. A society headed by M. Victor Boutrolle was created in the ninetensixties in order to have the property acquired by the town and the ‘église Saint Jacques’ saved from ruin and destruction.
A few years before 1969, the archbishop of Canterbury visited the archbishop of Rouen on a formal visit. He invited his French counterpart to the celebrations of the 800th anniversary of Thomas’s death to be held at Canterbury in 1970 and showed great interest in the places in Normandy that were linked one way or another with Thomas à Becket.
The rector of Penshurst, the Rev Anthony Curry, saw how difficult it was for young married couples to find accommodation within their means in the green belt of London. He decided to build eight small and comfortable houses where they would live happily without expatriating themselves to a distant town. The rector provided the land from the ‘glebe’ that was at his disposal, created the ‘Becket Trust’ to see to the project, and started collecting money. If you want people to help, you must make yourself known, and to make yourself known, you must strike people’s imaginations by doing something special. Such was one of the reasons why Tony Curry gave concerts with the ‘Penshurst Choral Society’ and an orchestra led by Clarence Myerscough. He walked all the way to Canterbury with some 30 parishioners on an 800th anniversary pilgrimage, and organized a ‘pageant’ in August 1970. Tony was very particular about inviting French guests from one of the Norman parishes which had a link with Thomas à Becket, he approached Canterbury and was given the name of Mont Saint Aignan…
It was in June 1969 that the vicar of Mont aux Malades received a letter from Tony Curry announcing his visit to Mont Saint Aignan in July as he was coming on holiday to France with his family. The letter was addressed to the Chairman of our Thomas Becket Association as ‘Father’ Boutrolle. As soon as ‘Mr’ Boutrolle, received the letter he forwarded it to the Jesuit brother he had in Nice. By the time the letter came back to Mont-Saint-Aignan, was read by Mr Boutrolle, and handed over to our vicar, Father J-B Tricoire, who passed it on to à teacher of English who happened to be no other than your humble servant, weeks had passed and the Summer holidays were nearly there. Father Tricoire told me to do what I could about it because he himself was about to go on holiday and would not be there then. Tony, Anne and their three daughters came to Courseulles-sur-Mer where we were staying at that time, they remained a week there, had a look at Mont Saint Aignan, and made friends with us for life.
Then things went fast. Tony came to Mont-Saint-Aignan in November with his friend Clarence Myerscough and gave a semi private recital in Mr Boutrolle’s home to a score of people from the Association and from the Town Council, including of course our mayor, Mr Brajeux. After that brilliant performance – Clarence taught the violin at the Royal Academy and Tony had graduated in organ music at Oxford – Tony invited us all to the Penshurst Festival and the Pageant in August. It was up to us to muster a group of about 30 persons to go to Penshurst with our vicar.
Father Tricoire went to Penshurst in February, made acquaintance with Anne and Tony, had a look at the church and Penshurst Place, and came back home resolute to come back with thirty parishioners.
In May, about 30 hardy pilgrims walked to Canterbury on the Pilgims’ Way preceded by the Penshurst ‘Albigentian Cross’ carried at one time by Morris Clark, the head gardener at Penshurst Place, and followed by a horse carrying the pilgrims’bags. As he was bearing the cross, Morris Clark thought it might be a good idea to carve a smaller version of it and present it to Mont-Saint-Aignan when the Penshurst Choral Society went there. The cross was carved out of walnut wood, presented in 1971 after the concert ( Brahms’s Requiem) in the brand new church where it is now, fixed near the entrance door above the stoup.
A delegation from the Mont Saint Aignan Town Council led by the mayor had officially been invited to attend the Canterbury celebrations in the Cathedral in July, they took some time to roam around Kent in search for a suitable town to twin with, and stopped on the way at the Penshurst Rectory where they were treated to a cupful of raspberries with cream and sang the Marseillaise in their coach at Tony’s request since their visit was taking place on July 14th.
Then came the Pageant in the first week of August. Tony had managed to get the artist in charge of the new ‘Becket window’ to remove one oast house from the stained glass panel and replace it with a representation of our old ‘église St Jacques’ and of our very new ‘église Notre-Dame-de-Miséricorde’ which had not yet been consecrated. In our group of Norman guests figured Norbert Greuet who did not know yet that this was the first of the hundred trips across the Channel he was to do in the course of the next forty five years. We had an ecumenical morning prayer led by our two priests, Tony Curry and Father Tricoire. The pagent proper was held on the grounds of Penshurst Place. Quite a few French people came back with the promise of a visit from their dear English new friends.
More events took place in 1971. Alain Brajeux renewed his team for the local elections and took me in with the particular aim to bring about a twinning with an English town. Since we could not find a place in the vicinity of Norwich, Rouen’s twin town, as had been done a few years before with Hannover and about ten surrounding towns twinned with Rouen plus the same number of neighbouring localities, we tried our luck in an altogether different direction, nearer Normandy.
The Penshurst Choral Society with orchestra led and conducted by Tony Curry came to Mont Saint Aignan in April 1971 to sing Brahms’s Requiem in the then new church, Notre Dame de Miséricorde’s. Links with Penshurst were reinforced on that occasion as we had to put up some sixty singers and musicians in local homes.
As I passed through Penshurst in August 1971, Tony Curry suggested the name of Edenbridge as a possible twin-town since Penshurst and its 1200 inhabitants could not be paired with a French town twelve times as big. He took me to Edenbridge where we met the Rev David Bartleet who gave us a good description of the town with its 8000 inhabitants, its historical past as a market town, and its changing status as a rural place harbouring commuters as well as exiles from the London East End working in new industrial plants.
A delegation of four councillors was sent to Edenbridge in 1972 to make proposals and see whether the Parish Council agreed to twinning exchanges. Our delegation was composed of Mme Maryse Silie, MM René Prévost and Henry Omanus, and myself. We met the chairman of the Parish Council, Bob Sims, and Mrs Eileen Wickenden, who was then District (or County ?) Councillor for Edenbridge. We agreed on including Penshurst into a sort of extended district that would gather an appropriate number of inhabitants to match our sixteen to twenty thousand. We came back to Mont Saint Aignan with a box of chocolates that were distributed among the councillors and the audience at the next council meeting, an ordnance survey map of the area, and one leather sole from the Tannery. We delivered a favourable report and the twinning was adopted. The Edenbridge Parish Council did the same on its side and that was it.
The rest is the history of the twinning. We went to Edenbridge in May 1973 with our mayor M. Alain Brajeux, a number of councillors including the four members of the previous expedition, and keen twinners , the keenest of all being Norbert who had carried in his car the stained glass pane now in Dogget’s Barn. The charter was signed by the officials representing the towns and the twinning committees, and the necessary speeches were made and listened to while a stunt pilot was celebrating on his own by doing acrobatics in the sky just above. We exchanged a few propitiatory presents and then proceeded to Pound’s Green in the wake of the scouts, guides, and brownies in order to plant the now thriving oak tree, and we visited Chartwell in the afternoon.
A similar set of celebrations took place in Mont Saint Aignan in October, all with the signing, the speeching, the planting and the scouting. It just happened to be on the anniversary date of the Battle of Hastings but no one mentioned it, and we planted a copper beech instead of an oak tree.
And we lived happily ever after.
Etienne Rousseau, one of the founder members
of the Edenbridge-Mont Saint Aignan Twinning, explains the historical links
between Mont Saint Aignan and Thomas a Becket, Henry II’s Chancellor and
Archbishop of Canterbury.
When Thomas a Becket was exiled to France he
stayed at the leper hospital near Abbaye Saint Gervais, Mont aux Malades, Mont
Saint Aignan. On his return to Canterbury, Thomas a Becket nominated the first
vicar of Penshurst just two days before he was assassinated on the orders of
Henry in December 1170.
800 years later, in 1970, Canterbury Cathedral
celebrated the 800th anniversary of Thomas a Becket’s death ; the rector
of Penshurst celebrated the 800th anniversary of Penshurst Church with a
Penshurst Festival.
The 1970 Penshurst Festival included the
Penshurst Choral Society travelling to Mont Saint Aignan to sing and perform, a
pilgrimmage from Penshurst to Canterbury by 30 parishioners, a pageant, a new
‘Becket’ window by renowned stained glass artist Laurence Lee, concerts, a
tapestry dedicated to St Luke stitched by Penshurst GP Doctor Wood and six new
affordable homes for young local families called Becket’s Field. Guests were
invited from Mont Saint Aignan.
The twinning between Edenbridge and Mont Saint
Aignan was adopted with a signed charter in 1983, and the 50th anniversary of
their twinning was celebrated in 2023. Although the Edenbridge and District
Twinning Association was formally closed in 2023, the towns of Edenbridge and
Mont Saint Aignan remain twinned. Eden Twinning was set up in 2023 and aims to
create and continue the cultural links between the two communities.