Profetic words

In the previous blog I moaned about some capitals bricked into a wall of a farm in Cluny we had been unable to find. I closed my blog with the more or less profetic words: " It would not surprise me if the wall has been demolished and that the capitals have disappeared to a museum somewhere...."

The gate and wall we were looking for

A pit bull never let go, and the same goes for me when it comes to seeming hopeless search actions.
I did not have much to go on. We were looking for a wall giving access to the courtyard of a farm "Ferme Sainte-Odile", not far from the "Porte-Sainte-Odile". All information came from three different websites, although they were somehow interlinked. One of the websites even suggested a possible location on a map of Cluny, but it also rated the reliability of this location as extremely low. The spelling of the farm and the gate was also not very reliable, since Saint-Odile was a man, and certainly not a woman (Sainte-Odile).
Cluny is a small town, and we regularly meet well known authorities on several subjects in its streets. People we know include the Mayor of Cluny, the writer of a number of books on local history, and several people involved in organising guided tours and lectures about the history of Cluny. This would not have been the first time that I tackled one of these authorities in the street with a burning question.

Google Earth of St-Odile quarter in Cluny

Suddenly I thought "Why on earth would I wait till I bump into one of them?". It must be possible to find an email address of one of the historians in Cluny, and a search action in my archives brought a brochure to light which had the email address of Jean-Luc Maréchal on it. He lives in an old historical building, and does every so often guided tours, which include a visit to his own house as well. During one of these visits we had bought a brochure, and that was the one I just had found.
An email with my question was quickly dispatched, and after that it was just hoping for an answer.

Could this be IT?

When we came back from doing some shopping, there also was an answer. Not from Maréchal, but from another expert on the subject, Jean-Denis Salvèque, who obviously worked closely together with Maréchal. His words were, freely translated:

"The 'Ferme Saint-Odile' is located approx. 100 m south of the Chapelle Saint-Odile. The capitals have been removed in the fifties, were on display in one of the abbey buildings, and went into storage in 2010."

The Porte Saint-Odile is not far from the chapel, and with these data it did not require magic to locate the farm with the help of Google Earth.

Or was this IT?

And once again we went to Cluny, hoping to find at least the old bit of wall. At the farm we found three different gates, all with stone posts, and all with hedges on both sides of the gate.
But the farm had two access roads, of which one was closed with a low but locked gate. I just was going to take a picture of the farm which was quite far away at the end of the road using my zoom lens,, when the owners of the neighbouring house came back from a walk. After we had explained to them that we were looking for something that had disappeared years ago, they thought at first that I came straight from the loony bin, but once they realised we were seriously looking for something they defrosted. The man had endless stories about the farm, even though he had never heard of these capitals. He knew for example that the farm had been built from stones bought from the demolished church Cluny III around 1800.

This looked more like it...

They had right of way on their neighbour's ground, and they opened the gate for us so that we could at least take some pictures of the gate down the road from nearby. The size of the gate looked quite similar to that of the gate on the black-and-white picture, so we thought we had found what we were looking for.
Until... we got home and sat down to study the pictures we took. The gate we thought was "THE" gate had an open background. The black-and-white photograph clearly showed a roof in the background, with a bit lower a lean-to and to the right a roof of an extension. On one of the pictures we had taken on the other side of the house however we could clearly see a roof, and below it a lean-to. Comparing the two pictures led to the following conclusion:

But this was THE gate!

The original gate and wall had been demolished after the capitals had been saved. Gate and walls were replaced with a new gate, stone posts and a high hedge. The building behind it was still intact, including the lean-to; the extension however had most likely also been demolished.

So my last remark on the previous blog was maybe not spot on, but close enough to boast supernatural tendencies!

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