An enclave of Anglicanism near Paris has been restored to the splendour of its 19th-century heyday, when it served a thriving expat horseracing community.
A £400,000 restoration of St Peter’s, Chantilly — built to serve the Britons who developed the now world famous racecourse in the 1830s — will be completed next month.
The idea of a British racecourse in Chantilly, in Oise in northern France, had been championed by Lord Henry Seymour and welcomed by Henri d’Orléans, the Duke of Aumale and the son of King Louis Phillippe I, whose château formed the hub of the village of Chantilly. The duke had great affection for Britain after the warm welcome his family received while in exile there. He sold land on his estate to enable the church to be built in 1865.
By the 1860s a 250-strong community of trainers, jockeys, lads, blacksmiths, groundsmen and their families had settled in Chantilly. British traders also arrived, including grocers, tea houses and tailors. Racing families brought over governesses, cooks and private tutors for their children. By the eve of the First World War there were more than 1,000 British residents in Chantilly, turning it into a thriving provincial town.
After the war many of the jobs at the racecourse were taken by French people. The British community shrank and there was just one service a month at St Peter’s.
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Fortunes improved in the 1970s when a new generation of Britons moved to the region to work at the newly built Roissy airport near by. The Rev Sarah Tillett, who became chaplain last month, now ministers to about 350 British families in and around Chantilly.
The neogothic church had been in a state of disrepair for many years. Services still took place even though walls were cracked, floorboards were missing or rotten and the stained glass windows were damaged.
The plaques on the walls, commemorating the racecourse’s founding families, the Carters, the Cunningtons and the Jennings, now look a little less forlorn. The community will turn its attention next to restoring the graveyard, where many of the course’s founders were laid to rest.