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Albert

A nice bed to sleep in - Hénencourt Chateau

Hénencourt village sign on the D119 with Hénencourt Chateau gates in the background. [DVA]

Directions: Hénencourt is a village some six kilometres to the north west of Albert. It can be reached on the D91 from Albert. The chateau is at the northern end of the village at the top of the Rue Neuve. More

During the early months of 1917, I ANZAC Corps had its headquarters at Hénencourt, ten kilometres north–west of Albert. It was commanded by Lieutenant General Sir William Birdwood (an Englishman, who had also commanded the ANZAC Corps at Gallipoli). Photographs show Birdwood and his staff in residence in the historic rooms of the Chateau de Hénencourt, built in the 18th century. Sadly, the German advance of March 1918 led to the destruction by shelling of half the building, but the rest is still there looking very much as it would have done when General Birdwood took a ride out through the chateau’s imposing gates.

Gates, Hénencourt Chateau, Hénencourt. [DVA]

Lieutenant General Sir William Birdwood, commander, I ANZAC Corps, goes riding, Hénencourt Chateau, March 1917. [AWM E02011]

English journalist Philip Gibbs visited the chateau two years before the Australians arrived when it was occupied by British staff officers. Little would have changed when First ANZAC and Birdwood arrived in 1917:

Hénencourt Chateau, Hénencourt. [DVA]

The general had a nice bed to sleep in. In such a bed Mme. du Barry might have stretched her arms and yawned, or the beautiful Duchesse de Mazarin might have held her morning levee. A British general, with his bronzed face and bristly mustache, would look a little strange under that blue–silk canopy, with rosy cherubs dancing overhead on the flowered ceiling. His top–boots and spurs stood next to a Louis Quinze toilet–table. His leather belts and field–glasses lay on the polished boards beneath the tapestry on which Venus wooed Adonis and Diana went a–hunting. In other rooms no less elegantly rose–tinted or darkly paneled other officers had made a litter of their bags, haversacks, rubber baths, trench–boots, and puttees. At night the staff sat down to dinner in a salon where the portraits of a great family of France, in silks and satins and Pompadour wigs, looked down upon their khaki.

Philip Gibbs, Now It Can Be Told, Part II, ‘The School of Courage’, Section XI, internet version, www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext02/nicbt10.txt

Hénencourt Chateau, Hénencourt. [DVA]

Hénencourt Chateau

Albert

A nice bed to sleep in - Hénencourt Chateau

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