Last modified: 2012-10-13 by ivan sache
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![[Flag of Etables]](../images/f/fr-22-em.gif)
Flag of Étables-sur-Mer - Image by Ivan Sache, 9 September 2012
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The municipality of Étables-sur-Mer (in Breton, Staol; 3,168 inhabitants in 2009; 938 ha) is located on the northern coast of Brittany, between Saint-Brieuc and Paimpol. É Étables-sur-Mer is surrounded by two other coastal municipalities, Saint-Quay-Portrieux (north) and Binic (south).
Étables-sur-Mer (Étables until 1949) developed around a church and a priory built in the 13th century. The priory was suppressed during the French Revolution; at the same time, the stone calvary dated form the late 15th-early 16th centuries was dismantled and hidden, and
eventually rebuilt in the 19th century.
In the past, most of the families of the village lived from cod
fishing in Newfoundland and Iceland, being hired by the shipowners
from the neighbouring town of Paimpol. The nickname of the inhabitants
of the village, "Tagarins", may refer to fishing. In the fisher's
jargon, the tagarins were intrepid men who would do everything to
get the best fishing spots, maybe as a reference to pirates from
Algiers of the same name. However, the historian Bernard Tanguy
believes that tagarin comes from Latin stabulum or tugdurium, meaning "a group of small houses".
Source: Municipal website
The Our Lady of Hope chapel, built in 1850 following a cholera epidemic, was a place of pilgrimage for the fishers, who decorated it with ex-votos. A perfect replica of the chapel was dedicated on 17 March 2008 in the Town of Felicity (official website), founded on 11 March 1986 in California by Jacques-André Istel (b. 1929), an US citizen of French origin, as the "Official Center of the World". Istel visited Étables in 2004 and decided to build the "church on the hill" as a replica of the Étables chapel.
Étables is the birth place of Anne-Thérèse Guérin (1798-1856), who entered in 1823 the Community of Sisters of Providence, as sister St. Théodore. In 1840, she founded a school in St. Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, and was declared, as Mother Théodore, Superior General of the Sisters of Providence of Saint-Mary-of-the-Woods (official website), a new order separate from that in France, eventually approved by the Holy See in 1887.
Mother Théodore was beatified by Pope John-Paul II on 25 October 1998 and canonized, as St. Theodora, by Pope Benedict XVI on 15 October 2006.
Étables became a sea resort at the end of the 19th century thanks to Oscar Legris (1844-1911), a rich industrial from Versailles, owner of the textile dyeing factory La Kabiline. In 1878, Legris built beach huts and organized warm baths in the Godelins beach, on the model of the neighbouring resort of Saint-Quay. In 1895-1900, he funded the building of a promenade and of another 85 huts, and started the set up of a new borough after having acquired more than 50 small plots (8-9 ha). Legris built 18 villas, differing in size but of the same architecture, arranged along the beach according to the alphabetic
order of their names, all being surnames (Amélie, Béatrix, Charlotte, Denise [renamed Saint-Denis], Elisabeth, Flore, Germaine, Henri,
Henriette, Isabelle, Jeanne, Lucie, Madeleine [La Korrigane], Noémi, Odon [Ker Odon], Olga, Praxède, Radegonde and Solange). Some of these villas were subsequently decorated by the mosaic artist Isidore Odorico (1893-1945, also a famous football player and manager of Stade Rennais, one of the founders of professional football in France). Each villa was rented, fully furnished, with a matching beach hut. Legris also sold plots to build new villas, whose design (and name!) should comply with strict urbanism regulations.
In 1906, the Hôtel Bellevue and the Hô:tel de la Plage were erected on plots sold by Legris. A project of horse-drawn tramway linking the villas to the beach, drafted in 1910, was deemed too expensive and never realized.
Source: Les villas Legris, Inventaire Général du Patrimoine
Ivan Sache, 9 September 2012
The flag of Étables-sur-Mer, as reported by D. Kervella and M. Bodlore- Penlaez (Guide des drapeaux bretons et celtes), is divided blue- yellow by the descending diagonal. The origin of the flag and the meaning of the colours are unknown.
Ivan Sache, 9 Septemner 2012