St Valery Sur Somme

The Abbey of Saint Valery, like many other monasteries, had suffered through its own renown; the relics of its founder had been carried off by the pious theft of a Count of Flanders, and had been restored by the pious intercession of a Duke of the French. Like many other monasteries too, the duty of its defence had given a title to a line of temporal nobles.


Photo © Donar Reiskoffer
22 aug 2003

The Advocates of Saint Valery were powerful lords; one of them, as we have seen, had married a daughter of Normandy, and a younger branch of his race filled a high and honourable place among the great houses of the Norman land. Of this famous abbey the vast encircling wall still remains, but the remains of the church are small, and of a date somewhat later than the days with which we are concerned. But the ancient town, rising, with its parish church, above the modern port which has arisen rather higher up the river, still retains its walls and gateways and general mediaeval look in singular perfection. Below, immediately on the coast, stands a ruined tower of rude work, to which an inaccurate or misunderstood legend has attached the name of Harold of England. The spot, even apart from its historical associations, is in every way striking. The broad estuary, the wooded heights above it, the ancient and the modern town, unite to form a singularly varied landscape. It was here, on the wide expanse of water into which the mouth of the great Picard river spreads itself, that the fleet of William rode, still waiting for the longlooked for south wind which should at once bear him and his host to the shores of Sussex.. --Freeman