Product Code Database
Berck (), sometimes referred to as Berck-sur-Mer in French or Berck-su-Mér in Picard language ( Berck on Sea), is a commune in the northern French department of Pas-de-Calais. INSEE commune file
Situated on the English Channel immediately north the mouth of the river Authie, Berck boasts over of sandy beaches and grass-topped dunes,Paris Aéroport, Paris Vous Aime Magazine, No 13, avril-may-juin 2023, p. 147 and since the middle of the 19th century it has been a destination for and vacationers.
As a result of the retreating coastline, boats were designed with flat bottoms so that they could be drawn up on the beach. A cart was driven out to them in order to bring in the catch (see Eugène Boudin's painting below).
Berck was a location of combat for centuries. The chronicler Enguerrand de Monstrelet mentions that during 1414 the English garrison in Calais raided south and burned the town. La chronique d'Enguerran de Monstrelet, Paris 1858 Vol.2 p.266 During the second siege of Montreuil in 1544, the English advanced from the south and burned 200 houses, the church and the mill as they passed through Berck. What was left of the place was burned by the French on their way to relieve the siege.Louis Brésin, Chroniques de Flandre et d'Artois: Analyse et extraits pour servir a l'histoire de ces provinces de 1482 à 1560, Dumoulin, 1880.
In the mid-19th century, Berck was given a therapeutic role in the treatment of tuberculosis. The Maritime hospital was inaugurated in 1869 by Empress Eugenie.Bruno Vanobber and Nancy Vansieleghem, "Repairing the body, restoring the soul: the Sea Hospital of the City of Paris in Berck-sur-Mer and the French war on tuberculosis", Paedagogica Historica 46.3, June 2010, pp. 325–340 Other hospitals and benevolent institutes were soon created to cater for the sick and those in need of rest and recuperation. It was at this time that the medical benefits of sea bathing were being recommended. The town, advertised as just a three-hour journey from Paris, began to build up its tourist trade with the help of the railways.
At first passengers had to alight at the nearby town of Verton, on the main line to Calais, but in 1893 a branch line was built connecting Berck with other towns in the region. As well as carrying passengers, the train carried goods traffic from the brick-works at Berck Ville. Known locally as le Tortillard for its wandering route, it was closed in 1955. There was a later narrow-gauge line running northwards through the dunes from Berck Plage to Paris-Plage, as Le Touquet was then known. It was built in stages via Merlimont between 1909 and 1912, but gradually it sanded over and closed in 1929.
During World War II the sea front was disrupted by the installation of the Nazi Atlantic Wall. The town suffered from bombing during the Allied invasion in 1944. This contributed to the diminishing of the ancient fishing industry, which numbered some 150 boats at the turn of the century. It had all but disappeared by the 1960s.
Today, although the hospital sector remains economically important, the town has again promoted itself as a tourist attraction. A seaside bathing station, with an immense beach of fine sand on the Opal Coast, it continues to be a centre for Land sailing and the new sport of . The former Berck Plage railway station has been converted into a casino.
The town has twinned with Bad Honnef in Germany and with Hythe in England.
The new church of Notre-Dame des Sables was opened in 1886 on the marketplace of the beach quarter. Its seating for 1,500 was to cater principally to holiday makers in season and to the patients from the many medical establishments profiting from the sea air. There are paintings on the choir walls.
Beside its medical establishments, the beach quarter catered to the moneyed classes in the second half of the 19th century. It slowly developed with grandiose villas, hotels and amenities. Among these were handsome casinos, of which the principal was the Eden, also known as the Grand Casino de la Plage, with a theatre and music hall. This was destroyed in war in 1944, but it is survived by its equally gorgeous rival, the Kursaal.There are several photos and post cards of these, along with casinos in neighbouring towns, on the Government cultural site The ambitious Cottage des Dunes, which tried to unite a luxury hotel and casino, failed commercially in 1913. After a brief spell of use as a hospital, it was adapted for official use. Another official building that survived the bombing was the town hall, which was built in 1893 and has murals painted by Jan Lavezzari.
After the stone tower of St John the Baptist fell into disuse as a lighthouse, it was replaced at first by a primitive oil lamp suspended in the dunes to mark the sandbars at the river mouth. Two years later a 10-metre tower was mounted above a keeper's cottage. This became hidden by construction of the maritime hospital in 1861. A new, taller tower was constructed in 1868. The two buildings, referred to locally as father and son ( le père et fils), stood next to each other until they were dynamited by the Germans in 1944.Paul Billadaz, Berck à travers les siècles vol. 2 The current concrete lighthouse, designed by Georges Tourry, was completed in 1951 and is 45 metres high. Its light can be seen from a distance of .
The town has had an aerodrome since 1917. This was in part because at the start of the 20th century, the area played its part in the race to take to the air. The artist Jan Lavezzari, who had originally studied engineering, tested a double lateen sail hang glider from the Merlimont sand dunes in February 1904. He was followed there that Easter by Gabriel Voisin, who made a trial flight in a glider plane modelled on that of the Wright Brothers and over a few seconds was airborne for 50 metres.Gijsbert-Paul Berk, André Lefebvre and the cars he created at Voisin and Citroën, Veloce Publishing Ltd, 2009 p.11
His one-time partner Louis Blériot never experimented with flight at Berck. He did develop and test the sand-yacht ( l'aeroplage) there in 1911 and pioneered the first race over the sands in 1913.
Since 1966 a six-hour endurance race has been hosted by the local Eole Club.Piers Letcher, Eccentric France, Bradt Travel Guides, 2003 p.30 Since 1986 there has been an annual kite-flying festival each April on the sands, attracting international exhibits of great beauty and inventiveness.There is a video of the 2009 festival here.
Following in their footsteps came the sons of local families who, until about 1914, constituted what has been called 'the Berck School'.Jean Bridenne, Les peintres de Berck, Le Chasse-Marée - ArMen, 1990 These included Francis Tattegrain, who was encouraged to take up art by Lepic;View a picture by him at Artnet Jan Lavezzari, son of the town architect who was also a friend of Lepic; Charles Roussel (1861–1936), who settled in the town in 1886; and Eugène Trigoulet (1864–1910).
After World War I the town and its inhabitants continued to be represented artistically by Roussel and by Louis Montaigu (1905–1988). Fishermen in interiors were a specialty of the latter.
A collection of these and other Opal Coast painters was opened in 1979 in the Municipal Museum, sited in Berck's old Gendarmerie. This was built at the end of the 19th century by Emile Lavezzari.
==Berck in the arts==
Among minor artists who have made Berck a subject in their work are Paul Laugée (1853–1937); Eugène Chigot (1860–1923), who had a studio there in 1893; and Georges Maroniez, A selection of his work online a judge who painted and photographed in the area during holidays. Two others stayed in the town because of its medical facilities. Albert Besnard was there in 1895 on account of his tubercular son. As a thanks offering for his cure, Besnard and his wife Charlotte decorated the walls of the chapel in the Cazin-Perrochaud Institute between the years 1898–1901. While he was there, he also executed oil paintings and etchings. See online Jean Laronze (see above) was also there in 1904 for the same reason and painted several canvases during his stay.
The town figures unfavourably in the long poem "Berck-Plage" by Sylvia Plath. Ariel, London 1965, pp.30-35 She had visited it in 1961 and wrote the poem a year later, mixing memories of maimed war veterans at the Berck hospital with impressions of the recent death and funeral of a neighbour.Jack Folsom, Death and Rebirth in Sylvia Plath's "Berck-Plage", Temple University 1994
In Jean-Paul Sartre's Le Sursis (The Reprieve), the character of Charles is evacuated from the military hospital at Berck just before the outbreak of the Second World War. The town also figured in the novel Une année à Berck by Christian Morel de Sarcus (Paris, 1997).Christian Morel de Sarcus, Biographie
|
|
