A traditional 17th-century country home with a caretaker's house and seven hectares of grounds, near the city of Périgueux in France's Dordogne area -
A traditional 17th-century country home with a caretaker's house and seven hectares of grounds, near the city of Périgueux in France's Dordogne area.
The city of Périgueux, the administrative centre of France's Dordogne department, is officially recognised for its wealth of built heritage. Around it, the countryside is made up of gently undulating land, meadows, woods and villages built around their churches. The property is tucked away in this bucolic backdrop, among farms and scattered dwellings. You can reach the A89 motorway in around 15 minutes. Via this motorway, you can get to the city of Bordeaux in 1 hour and 30 minutes and the city of Brive-la-Gaillarde in 45 minutes. The airports of Bergerac and Brive-la-Gaillarde are only an hour away by car.
The seven-hectare property lies on the plateau of a west-facing hillside, just outside a hamlet. Its landscaped grounds are made up of meadows and deciduous woods through which paths run. The house's main section and its wings, at a right angle to it, demarcate a vast, gravelled courtyard, closed with a wooden gate that stands alongside a country lane. There is a pond opposite the main entrance. The grounds slope gently around the buildings with a sweeping view of the surrounding landscape. A few clusters of shrubs and some tall trees, including a cedar and an oak, give structure to the edges. A driveway extends the central route up to a shady bench. A swimming pool and terrace face the setting sun.
The main houseThe country house was built in the 17th century. It has a long central corridor that faces east and west and is punctuated with five glazed openings that are evenly spaced out. A crawl space lies beneath the dwelling. A mansard roof, underlined with a génoise cornice, crowns the building. Each end of the main section has a tall hipped roof with a court-facing dormer. The upper section of the mansard roof has barrel tiles and its lower section has flat tiles, as do the hipped roofs at the ends, which is more suitable for their steeper slopes.
The ground floor
The main section has three dual-aspect reception rooms that connect to each other. Each one has a stone fireplace, alcoves and built-in cupboards. A corridor connects to two bedrooms with direct views of the grounds. At the other end, a hallway leads to the north wing, which extends the reception rooms to a vast dining room with an open-plan kitchen. This section is a former cowshed, now restored and terracotta-tiled. It also includes a bedroom and bathroom. In an adjoining square tower, there are two extra bedrooms for children. A scullery forms a link between the secondary entrance doors, a utility room, a pantry, a separate lavatory and a way up to the first floor.
The upstairs
Beneath the sloping ceilings of the roof space, a landing connects to two bedrooms, each of which has its own private bathroom with a lavatory. The windows are fitted with indoor shutters and the floors are terracotta-tiled.
The court and outbuildingsThe square courtyard is edged with old agricultural outbuildings, whose many openings bear witness to their past uses: there was originally a bakehouse, a storeroom, a press room, a fermenting room, a stable, cowsheds and a sheep shed. Today, these spaces have been designed to form complementary spaces: an extension of the home, a woodstore, a shelter for vehicles and a self-contained dwelling. A barn, noticeable as such with its large cart entrance door, has remained in its original state.
The caretaker's houseThe caretaker's house, in an outbuilding that is not at all overlooked by the main house, faces south. You can reach it straight from the road. It is a fully self-contained dwelling. ...
