The Boileau Arms sat on the south side of Hammersmith Bridge at the beginning of Castelnau Road. Since the 1980s it has changed hands and name many times and is now The Castelnau. All this is terrifically relevant to Gascony where Castelnau is a common place name.
One such is Castelnau-le-Lez, near Montpellier: in 1691, the 10th Baron of Castelnau and St Croix, a Huguenot, fled France for England to escape persecution. His son, Charles Boileau, settled in Barnes and his descendants developed parts of the area. So that’s how the pub and the road got their names.
Yesterday I went to Castelnau-sur-l’Auvignon. A lent me Moondrop to Gascony by Anne-Marie Walters. She was a British agent parachuted into France in 1944.
On a cold, moonlit night in January 1944, Anne-Marie Walters, just twenty years old, parachuted into southwest France to work with the Resistance in preparation for the long-awaited Allied invasion. The daughter of a British father and a French mother, she was to act as a courier for George Starr, head of the ”Wheelwright” circuit of the Special Operations Executive. Over the next seven months, Walters crisscrossed the region, carrying messages, delivering explosives, arranging the escape of downed airmen, and receiving parachute drops of arms and personnel in the dead of night — living in constant fear of capture and torture by the Gestapo. Then, on the very eve of liberation, she was sent off on foot over the Pyrenees to Spain, carrying urgent dispatches for London. (Amazon)
She wrote her memoir immediately after the war and it has been republished with additional material by historian, David Hewson. George Starr, code name Hilaire, set up his HQ in Castelnau-sur-l’Auvignon. On 21st June 1944 the German army attacked this hilltop village. They hoped to encircle it but were frustrated by a brave band of Spanish communists who had joined the Resistance having been forced out of Spain by Franco’s forces.
The Resistance fighters put up a good fight but seeing that defeat was inevitable evacuated. They blew up their arsenal in a tower in the village. Nineteen of the Resistance died in the engagement and 240 German soldiers.
The village was destroyed by the Germans but has been rebuilt. The tower where the munitions were blown up is still there and the church. The population in 2008 was 159 and it looks if anything that it is smaller today. The village has many boards telling this wartime story and a fine memorial to the dead Resistance fighters. There are more Spanish than French and two civilians are named.
The village was almost deserted except for a few pilgrims trudging towards Condom, eight km west. It is on the route to Santiago de Compostela. Although it was a hot, sunny day the atmosphere was sombre.
Back at the domaine (above) we have been out on safari in the evenings. Armed with drinks we park in the woods and await events. The first evening three sanglier crossed the drive behind us; luckily I was keeping an eye on the rear view mirror or we would have missed them. Last night we saw deer but no sanglier.