In my frequent meanderings around Sainte-Foy-La-Grande I am often struck by the names of the roads. They’re almost all historical references to people or events. Some are self explanatory – rue Victor Hugo requires no explanation, does it? When we first bought Les Terraces I learned that rue Denfert Rochereau got its name from General Pierre Philippe Denfert-Rochereau, who is most famous for his defence of the town of Belfort during the Franco-Prussian war.
However, there is one road with the most intriguing of names. It is rue du Puits des Amours. A straight translation gives me “Street of the Well of Love(s)”. Now, if you’re into patisserie you’ll know that Puits d’Amour are puff pastries rather like a vol-au-vent that is filled with redcurrant or raspberry jam and topped with caramel or sugar. These were apparently rather popular in the court of Louis XV. But there is an erotic connotation to the name too and I have to wonder whether it might be an oblique reference to the existence of a brothel on the road in former years.
There is a wonderfully carved frontage to a building on rue de la Republique (no prizes for getting this reference correct), which caught my attention early in my peregrinations.
It is intriguing to think that while most of the town’s roads seem to have been renamed in the 1800s this old reference seems to have endured. I am going to have to learn more when we return in the spring. The other mission I have is to discover what all the roads were named before the revolution.
In the meantime, I’m also rather intrigued by an area called Grenouilleau, which seems to me to mean ‘frog water’, although a Google search has led me to an interesting blog (in French) that covers some correspondence from the early 1900s from a young Auguste Grenouilleau (you can find it here, if you’d like to take a look). More research has yielded the fact that Grenouilleau is a very rare name indeed, with only about 183 people in the world known to have it as their surname, most of whom can be found living on France’s western coast.
Although I run the risk of boring you, I thought that it might be interesting to list the origins of the road names within the bastide (the toponymy of Sainte-Foy-La-Grande):
| Langalerie | Possibly Pierre de Gentil , Marquis de Langalerie. B:1661, d:1717. A general in the army of Louis XIV who deserted and then became an influential religious reformist and conspirator against the Holy Roman Empire. |
| Jean-Jacques Rousseau | Swiss philosopher. B: 1717 d:1778. Had enormous influence on the French Revolution |
| Victor Hugo | French poet, novelist & dramatist b:1802, d:1885. Les Miserables & Hunchback of Notre Dame. |
| Louis Pasteur | French chemist & microbiologist. B:1822, d: 1895. Renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination. |
| Jean Louis Faure | Born in Sainte-Foy-La-Grande in 1863,d: 1944: famous surgeon whose work was pivotal in the treatment of uterine cancer. |
| Waldeck Rousseau | Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau. B: 1846, d:1904. Statesman & barrister. |
| Rue du Puits des Amours | unknown |
| Laregnere | Unknown – possibly Mathieu-Eleonor Jouhaneau-Laregnere, the Mayor of Pineuilh 1815-1852. |
| Gratiolet | Louis Pierre Gratiolet, born in Sainte-Foy-La-Grande in 1815, d: 1865. Anatomist & zoologist. |
| Le Priola | unknown. |
| Freres Reclus | Elisee(b: 1830, d:1905) & Elie (1827-1904)Reclus: Born in Sainte-Foy-La-Grande. Elisee was a geographer & anarchist, while his brother Elie was an ethnographer & journalist. |
| Denfert Rochereau | Pierre Philippe Denfert-Rochereau. B:1823, d: 1878. General nicknamed “the Lion of Belfort”. |
| Chanzy | Antione Alfred Eugene Chanzy, b1825, d:1883. General. |
| Marceau | Francois Severin Marceau-Desgraviers, b:1769, d:1796. General in the French revolutionary wars. |
| Tourny | Possibly Louis-Urbain-Aubert de Tourny, b:1695, d:1760. Administrator in Bordeaux who beautified the banks of the Garonne. |
| Charles Garrau | Possibly a French mathematician who died in 1846. He wrote a manuscript of more than 600 pages entitled “Arithmetique practique et raisonee”. His inclusion on a web site run by “Les Amis de Sainte-Foy at sa region societe d’histoire” suggests that he may have been a native of the town. |
| Paul Broca | Born in Sainte-Foy-La-Grande in 1824, d: 1880. A physician, anatomist, surgeon & anthropologist after whom a region of the frontal lobe of the brain has been named. |
| Jean Corriger | Appears to have been a native of Sainte-Foy in the 17-1800s who wrote a book covering 700 years of history of Sainte-Foy-La-Grande. |
| Gambetta | Leon Gambetta, b:836, d:1882. Barrister & Statesman, renowned for proclaiming the Republic of France and escaping Paris in a hot-air balloon |
Well, there you go! I find it fascinating that a little tiny town such as Sainte-Foy-La-Grande should have produced such a significant number of men of influence in the 1800s. It leaves me wondering why, what were the particular circumstances that permitted it, and why did it not endure? Clearly questions for another day!