Pays de Bray

This is why the Pays de Bray's outline is shaped as a buttonhole, marked as it is with surrounding escarpments of 60 to 100 metres in height, making it a distinct physical and cultural entity.

As a result of its clay-rich soil, the traditional building style of the Pays de Bray is of cob (sometimes changed to brick since the 19th) and tile throughout, showing wattle and daub structures.

The syncline to the north of the Isle of Wight underlies the Hampshire Basin and rises in the next anticline to form Salisbury Plain and the Wealden ridge of which the territory of Boulogne-sur-Mer, the Boulonnais is the equivalent feature in France.

Fundamentally, the Bray fault dates from the late Carboniferous and Early Permian but the effect in France and England, of its associated earth movements, has quietly continued so as to gently fold the overlying Jurassic and Cretaceous strata.

The famous local speciality of fromage frais called petit Suisse was launched from a farm near Gournay-en-Bray; Charles Gervais set up his first factory at Ferrières-en-Bray and his second one at Neufchâtel-en-Bray (closed in 2009).