Medieval Style Round Dining Table: With Granite Inlaid Top – SPT495

Medieval Style Round Dining Table: With Granite Inlaid Top

Medieval Style Knight of the Round Table Inspired Design. French Style Dining Table Influenced By The Chateau de Hattonchatel

Château de Hattonchâtel - French Chateau

The Chateau de Hattonchatel is a chateau in Vigneulles Hattonchatel in the Meuse department, France. The château was built during the 9th century by Hatto, Bishop of Verdun, whose name it bears, on a rocky promontory overlooking the Seine Valley. The settlement became the chief stronghold of the bishops and also the location of their mint until 1546. In 1636 the retreating Swedes besieged and burnt most of the town.

Lady Belle Skinner

The American Lady Belle Skinner from Holyoke, Massachusetts. After graduating from Vassar in 1887, Belle Skinner spent a year in France where she fell in love with the village of Hattonchatel because it reminded her of the idyllic Connecticut Valley near her home in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

"During the dark days of 1918, she saw it again, this time through field glasses from within the French lines. It was in the hands of the Germans. They had taken the village without resistance and had held it for four years. Miss Skinner declared to a French officer that this was to be her village to adopt. When he protested that there was nothing left but the hill, she replied with true American vision: 'Then I will rebuild what there is of it.'"

After the war, in 1919, she returned to Hattonchatel to make good on her promise. She spent a million dollars on the reconstruction - including a new water system, electricity, a model school house, and a town hall with a library and a cinema hall. "In recognition of her unselfish and well-directed efforts for the relief of suffering in France, the French Government bestowed upon Belle Skinner, in 1919, the Gold Medal of the Reconnaissance Francaise, and, in 1920, the Cross of the Lagion d'Honneur." (Source: wikipedia.org)