Chamber pot street...

This has to be one of our favourite Chinon street names...

The street is in the medieval quarter of Saint-Etienne but the street name is not in fact that old, dating from the end of the nineteenth century. Prior to this it was known as "passage du jeu de paume" or in English the rather less romantically sounding "passage from the tennis court".

Legend has it that following a wedding the young men brought a chamber pot of onion soup for the newly weds. So as not to waken them they climbed a wall into the garden and in so doing they broke the chamber pot. The newly weds therefore never got the soup, but the name of the street was changed: the chamber pot was broken but not forgotten!