We always wanted a Place in the Sun and although we weren’t quite escaping to a Chateau, what attracted us to this particular Grande Maison was it’s 3 storeys and the vaulted wine caves beneath.
With all that floor space combined you have nearly 300 square meters.
We had two caves and a boiler room. They hadn’t been used for thirty years and the last occupants were bats and owls. The previous occupants before that were probably either donkeys, goats or chickens.
The French use large piles of sand rich soil to bury root vegetables as a means of storage over winter.
When we first viewed the caves they were absolutely full of junk. The estate agent or ‘agence immobilière’ didn’t want to enter them due to the bats. I wasn’t fazed by them as in a previous job I made radio tags for a multitude of animals and regularly used to fit tags to bats and other weird and wonderful creatures. There was indeed a sleeping bat hanging from the ceiling and we nicknamed it ‘Bertie’.
Whilst digging out the floors I found large quantities of what look like dried swede, beetroot, and turnip. I wasn’t about to eat them but considering they had been, stored for since the mid 90’s they were in incredible condition.
The floor of the caves turned out to be solid concrete; which was incredible news. We also found that the upstairs bathroom sink and bath (currently disconnected), simply drained into a sand pit in the corner of the cave!
Hidden underground stream
Underneath the cave floor we also found a small 50cm wide, slow moving stream. Interestingly, the stream did not go to the drain hole in the boiler room. It simply disappeared without trace.
Boilers – electric and wood
The hardest and hottest room to clear out was the room with the boilers in. The boilers are in terrible condition. The electric boiler in particular is way beyond saving.
The roof of the boiler room uses, terracotta tiles. There is an area in the corner of the boiler room that has been used as some kind of makeshift incinerator. It has a chimney and a shroud to keep the smoke at bay. This area was probably used to burn garden waste. It is illegal to have open fires in France. We may well replicate a much improved version of the same.
This room was full of 31 wheel barrow loads of rocks and soil. France was in a Red Alert heat wave and it was a sauna inside.
The soil was used to create a level area in the garden for a remembrance bench. The bench originally belonged to Mark’s mum who died Oct 16 2021. Fully restored with new mahogany from a old railwayman’s hut and inlaid roses this is a Memorial Bench to Mark Mum and Mandy’s Dad Tony.
Within minutes of placing the bench on it’s new site overlooking the large pond in our garden, butterflies settled on it and started to stretch their wings.
It was a beautiful moment.
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