Château Shopping (no. 11)
Oui et Non!?! - Perfect in every way… except one!
Five hours north of Carcassonne is a region known as Le Berry, it is located in central France and was once a province until the département system replaced the provinces. Le Berry was split into three Départements, but the locals still refer to it as Le Berry. With our agent in tow we drove up to spend three days exploring and looking at real estate.
Chateau shopping in Le Berry is very different from shopping in the south as there are so many more properties available and the prices are much, much lower. This of course immediately causes the internal question machine to kick into high gear… Why??? Why are prices so much lower? Why are there so many more properties available? Perhaps it is because we found ourselves literally in the center of the country and there simply is not the draw of other regions. I have never heard a single person say they were headed to the center of France for a vacation. This should have put us off, but as we are not going to rely on drop-ins in our business model, we could consider the area. Le Berry is beautiful French countryside. Rolling hills dotted with villages, farm land, and livestock, but the weather is colder and the season shorter. The draw of the properties is really what took us there and we were not disappointed. We saw three castles in two days, each very different from the others.
Château de la Commanderie de Farges-Allichamps was the first on the day we arrived in the north. Can you imagine answering the phone all day long with a name like that? The Château is on the edge of a small village and on our approach we both, first internally and then verbally expressed… WOW, Perfect!!! It has everything we are looking for. Although in need of… well… everything! The Château is stunning. In truth it is two Châteaux (apologies to those who spoke against the “'X”), two castles at right angles to each other, joined at the center by a massive tower. The Château on the left having been built in the seventeenth century, the tower and the Château on the right having been built in the nineteenth century. Why renovate when you can just build a second, more modern Château right next door. The Tower door is now the main entrance to the castle, and yet the original entry to the old Château still exists. The tower entrance leaves you a bit weak in the knees as you are presented with a gothic revival, circular staircase, rich in stone carvings of flora and dragons.
I will now inundate you with photographs! We took so many and there are wonderful photo after wonderful photo. We truly were mesmerized! that is until we went behind the Château…
The exterior of the Châteaux
Château de la Commanderie de Farges-Allichamps
The interiors of the Châteaux are very different from each other. The older wing having been redressed throughout the ages, to this day does not have the grandeur of the newer wing. In the newer wing the spaces are vast, with massively high ceilings. The method in which the two structures align with each other is fascinating and words to describe it would be incomprehensible, suffice it to say the first, second, and third floors do not align with each other, and there is a cellar, but only in the new wing. I will leave it to you, the reader, to guess as to whether an interior photograph is from the old wing or the new wing. Special prize if you can get them all correct!
The interiors
Wandering through the older section first we were not prepared for the newer section. The old section is in essence a fully contained Château on its own, with two entries, a main staircase, a salon or two, a dining room, lots of bedrooms, frightening bathrooms, and of course a kitchen. That kitchen is but a throw away compared to the kitchen in the nineteenth century wing. When built it was the height of modern convenience, everything that the modern family, cook, and staff could want. From a coal fired cooker to a warming tray, a hand cranked well pump to hot water supply, electric lighting to a gravity fed furnace, and finally throw in a dumbwaiter leading to the butlers pantry above. Now all decrepit and rotting away, but never to far to be saved, it is more like a museum than a possible home! But what a glorious kitchen it will make someday!
The nineteenth century Kitchen
And then the Outbuildings… Two large buildings once used for horses and livestock, as well as potting and crop preparation. There is the ruin of a low slung green house on the property but I am not sure it can be saved. Just like the kitchen it was very high tock for its time with a boiler and hot water circulation to keep the greenhouse warm in the winter.
The Outbuildings
Everything about this Château is perfect, from it’s condition and size to it’s price… We are still unsure about where it is located, but we would consider it. However… when you are standing on the terrace of the rear of the Château pictured above, you hear it. The constant, distant sound of the motorway. It is not right at the backdoor of the property but it is not too far away. It is an ever present sound. Not the sound of individual cars or trucks, but a blended together mild white noise. Not anywhere near as bad as the second Château featured in Château Shopping (no. 3) but still enough to cause ones pause. You cannot hear a thing inside the Château, unless you throw open a window facing the backside, nor can you hear a thing in the yard in front, but the land in front is minimal due to the village. The Château is so perfect, fabulous, over the top, impressive, beautiful, fascinating, intriguing, just plain cool! but is that enough to overcome the motorway? Will this continuous and constant reminder spoil the fantasy? Will the romantic, tranquil beauty of the French countryside dissolve in the sounds of modern life wizzing by?
We have become so mired in these questions that we do not know what to think anymore. But I do know that Mrs. Patmore and Daisy will be so happy humming away down below, preparing wonderful and delectable art for the palate, in their very modern kitchen of the future!