A few weeks ago I had a wander around the cemetery in my village St Frichoux.
I wanted to try and find the graves (or rather tombs) of the old house owners. Some names and dates.
In France they generally have these great big stone and marble graves, several metres high, sometimes very ornate, marble or carved stone. They’re proper tombs for whole families to be buried in.
I’d guessed that as the Pagès family was pretty wealthy, they’d have an enormous edifice with gargoyles ‘n all!
What I found was a small grave, modest, in stone and marble, with raised lettering on the front
F  A  M  I  L  L  E    P  A  G  E  S
There were no clues as to who had been buried there in the past which was disappointing. What there was is shown in this next picture. The grave had been used by the family DOUTRE as recently as 2006, when Suzette Doutre was buried there with her husband who had been buried 13 years before. He wasn’t in the family bloodline, whereas Suzette’s maiden name was JOFFRES, which I have found out is intertwined in the families history. I left feeling a little deflated. Where was the grave of Louise Pagès, the lady everyone called ‘La Comtesse’ ?

Grave of Suzette Joffres, Roger Doutre and other unknown PAGÈS, St Frichoux, France

On the first visit I only had these two surnames in my repertoire, Doutre and Pagès, so I wasn’t looking for other peoples tombs, so I unknowingly passed a very important one that day.
Before I’d visited the archive the names St Pierre, Ramel, or de Godèbout meant nothing to me. Today I went to look for a St Pierre family tomb as they were such a wealthy and influential  family in St Frichoux and definitely owned my house for 100 years at least.
I didn’t expect to find nothing at all. No crumbled headstone. No ivy-entwined cross. There was not a single sign of that family in that cemetery which I still am trying to understand.

However, what I did find were the surnames of two important people in my search – Ramel and de Godébout sharing probably the fanciest tomb in the graveyard!
Ramel was the owner after the St Pierre’s, and the interesting Monsieur de Godébout during the 1950’s and 60’s. Click here for Owners Timeline
The door was unlocked, so I stepped in. A simple altar squarely in front with a small stone cross. The altar had a small locked door face-on, but this was locked.
The ceiling was vaulted in a Gothic style and had been re-plastered over the years, but with the damp the top layer was pulling away so that the under layers showed.
There were marvellous old banded lines of different colours as the ceiling vaulted upward, with the roof panels in a sky blue. All damaged but more-or-less intact.
This was a tomb of some age, not built with de Godébout’s money, but with Ramel’s.

Tomb of Family Ramel and Godébout, St Frichoux, France

But there’s yet another conundrum here……
The family trees that I have compiled have no clear link between the two of them. As far as I know with the information I have, de Godébout was Louise Pagès’s gentleman friend. They both lived in the big house together. The man they called ‘The Count’. I don’t think he was ever a noble, although his father, Alfred Gabriel Paulin Marie Michel, was the Baron de Godébout and he lived in St Frichoux too.

I don’t know whether it’s me, but I’m not entirely sure about the marble name plaque above the door.
A tomb of this quality with lovely stone decoration and cloverleaf windows would surely have had an engraved family name in the stone?
And the things been bolted on!
I’m wondering if they’ve covered up a name that could lie underneath? St Pierre? Are they even allowed to do that?!