How the twinning of Rochdale and Tourcoing brought Isabelle Sarron and Michael Bonsall together

Isabelle Bonsall (née Sarron) with her husband, Michael.

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Born in Tourcoing, then 14-year-old Isabelle Sarron was a pupil at Collège Jules Verne in Neuville-en-Ferrain (Tourcoing-Nord) when she first visited Rochdale on a two-week school exchange in July 1977.

By contrast, Michael Bonsall was a 13-year-old pupil at Shawfield Middle School (now Norden Primary) when 30 students from the twinned town arrived in the borough. 12 of them, including Isabelle, were staying in Norden.

Isabelle, who had only been abroad once before the exchange, recalled: “Among the 30 young French students that made up the group, 12 of us were staying in Norden with English hosts. I stayed with a girl called Tracy and she took me to her school and introduced me to her friends, including Michael. I think I had just finished learning how to play rounders, but I still can’t understand the rules.

“We were very young but we remember it was a good laugh. Neither of us could really speak the other’s language, but it was fun trying. We had an ‘Au Revoir Disco’ at the end of the stay. We had a dance and Michael gave me a Mackintosh Weekend box of chocolates. Very British but they don’t exist anymore.”

Hailing from ‘a very flat part of France’, Isabelle loved the hills of Rochdale, but admitted English cuisine ‘took some getting used to’.

She explained: “I had never drunk tea or a hot drink with a meal before- water and wine were always on a French table- or eaten a hot pudding. I did not know what a pie was; I had never seen a parsnip and jellies were the most alien desserts of all- pink or green and wobbly.

“The amount of rain is the only thing I disliked, and to be honest, to this day, I have never been able to get used to it.”

In August 1977, the couple began writing letters to each other and met up whenever they could.

Isabelle, who works a Course Director at Alliance Française in Manchester, commented: “We had our own separate lives as young teenagers and then as university students in our respective countries, Michael in Nottingham reading pharmacy and me in Lille reading English and going on to teacher training college. We had our separate social life but we never stopped writing to each other, half in English, half in French and we have kept all our letters.”

Michael first visited Tourcoing in 1979 for an international football tournament and returned ‘whenever he could’: Isabelle visited Rochdale every year in July with the exchange group, staying with families in Norden, Milnrow, Shawclough and Middleton.

She added: “I stayed with Mr and Mrs Nicholls in Milnrow. He was such a lovely man who worked for the local newspaper and used to correct my English. Sadly, he has passed away.”

In 1988, Isabelle and Michael decided to live together so Isabelle moved to England the following year. They married in 1990 in Folkestone, Kent where Michael had started his career as a pharmacist, and caught a ferry to France the same day to carry on the celebrations.

They moved back to Rochdale in 1991, and Isabelle began teaching French at Wardle High School. They now have two grown-up daughters, who are both bilingual.

Isabelle commented: “Neither of us thought the exchange would result in something like this. But isn’t life full of great surprises? And Michael thinks that 40 years later, his French teacher from Shawfield School would be very impressed with his progress in the language.”

Rochdale was twinned with Tourcoing with an official ceremony in 1956, to help ‘heal the wounds of war’.

Situated close to Lille, the French town is similar to Rochdale in many ways, from the beautiful Town Hall in the heart of the town and the Church of Saint-Christophe with its magnificent organ and bell tower which has a peal of 49 bells. Tourcoing also has an open-air market and large supermarkets.

Rochdale and Tourcoing share a history of textile industries, their decline and resulting problems. From a rural cottage industry in weaving, the economic importance of Tourcoing town grew and was acknowledged in the 1300s with the granting of a Free Fair. By the end of the 19th Century, Tourcoing was one of the most important centres for wool in the world.

As in Britain, the Nord's textile mills suffered in the world depression of the 1930s, and boomed in the reconstruction after World War Two. In the late fifties, the relentless flood of cheap imports drove most of them out of business as they could not stand the competition, like the textile mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire.