From House to Château

Tags

Chateau, France, home, life, renovation

Quite some years ago a book came out entitled A year in Provence, it was a best seller, everyone read it and many then travelled to Provence and bought homes with dreams of turning them into B&B and living on French wine, baguette and cheese without speaking French. Then came Under the Tuscan Sun, later another book entitled A year in Tuscany came out. Same idea of idyllic life in Tuscany without speaking Italian. Tuscany is only one province of Italy, the rush of tourists saw a sharp price increase and though we could travel for lunch in Florence from Rome easily, we often preferred to travel across to the Marche Province on the Adriatic for our annual vacation. Or how about Sicily? love that Island, it’s food and splendid wines.

So from buying a house, renovating it and doing a Shirley Valentine number many realized that it was not that simple and the difficulties quickly mounted. The BBC did a series on Provence and Brits who had come to discover it charms as detailed in the book. Most within 2 years discovered real life is not a book, many sold and moved out, too many problems, language and different attitudes and differences made for more problems than they had bargained for. Same in Tuscany, unless you have oodles of money and can come and go at will, think again.

Now we have gone from buying a house to buying a French Château no less, with grand gates and huge parkland plus many other buildings like a chapel and barn, keepers cottage and stables. All in need of major rebuilding, renovations and continuous maintenance. This idea is out there and the internet offers opportunities buyer beware.

One is the Chateau de Gudanes in the Pyrennées, an Australian family bought the half demolished castle about 10 years ago and have been rebuilding it, a major undertaking. They now have a shop on the internet and they sell stuff which is suppose to be items from chateau life. The couple who bought the place appear to have split up, only the wife remains and as for the kids it is not clear if they returned to Australia. Apparently renovations continue but lately I noticed it is always the same pictures of projects from some years ago. They no longer have the teams working nor the experts from Paris coming down to help out.

Château de Gudanes

Another Chateau is La Grifferaie in Anjou, bought by an American Evangelical couple who plan to use the place for Bible studies for Americans. The rest could be used as a B&B. The couple is from Oregon, they really look out of place in Anjou.

Yet another is the Chateau de Purnon, bought by a young Australian couple, a huge place. I wonder where do they get their money to buy such an estate in Aquitaine. There are lots of Château for sale in France, some are in pristine conditions while others need major work. In this case the couple speak French which is a big help in an isolated region. They are also getting some governmental help on renovations for this Château built in 1717.

Chateau de Purnon

The BBC had a series on mansions and great homes bought by people who had a dream of renovating such places. Many such great homes were built more than 200 years ago and required expert work. Some where nothing more than ruins, why would you buy such a place. One fellow who had made a fortune in IT renovated an old Bishops palace with ornate rooms, this required experts to rebuilt and restore decorative elements, the end result was truly magnificent but you wonder how much did it cost.

The unusual case of John Montague, the Earl of Sandwich and his wife the Countess who live at Mapperton a place mentioned in the Doomsday Book, the mansion house dates to 1540 with their daughter-in-law Julie Montague, their son Luke Montague Viscount Hichingbrooke, her husband help run and renovate the Estate as a business venture. The beautiful gardens of Mapperton can be rented for weddings. On the Estate they even have their own church which dates back to the 12th Century. Julie and Luke run the place in order to pay for the upkeep which is considerable.

I do wonder where this fascination in people comes from, I recall some visitors at Government House here in Charlottetown which was built around 1834 and remains to this day the home and workplace of the Lieutenant Governor of PEI. This visitor said to me how wonderful it would be to live in such a grand mansion. Knowing the background of the place, I do not think so, such homes are rarely comfortable and are more designed for representational purposes than relaxation and home life.

MAPPERTON HOUSE

Music on Mardi Gras

Tags

Architecture, art., Chateau, culture, France, life, Louis XV

On this Mardi Gras I was looking today at a documentary on the Château of Choisy-Le-Roy near the town of Choisy, this music was the background.  Concerto Comique no.14 La Choisy composed by Michel Corrette 1707-1795, who held many posts at Court and was a teacher.  These two pieces would have been composed for the Hunt, La chasse aux Cerfs which was done on horseback and packs of hounds. King Louis XV was an avid hunter and the woods of Choisy was his private domain. He did not like Versailles much and found life at Court tedious and boring with all its Official Protocol.

Unfortunately the Château and the domain were sold at the revolution and today nothing remains. Choisy in the last 30 years has made great efforts to save the park for the municipality and create public spaces on what was the domain. A rebuilt train station sits on what was once the grounds of the Château.

 

 

Marly

Tags

Archeology, Chateau, France, history, life, Louis XIV

I love to watch YouTube videos about historical places. There are quite a few made on French chateaux like Versailles and the numerous renovations it is going through, currently the roof of the Chapelle of the Palace is being rebuilt, it has never been done since the construction of the Palace as we know it today in 1668.

There was another Chateau called Marly, not very far by carriage or horse ride from Versailles. Louis XIV love going there, it was very small and simple if compared to Versailles. Marly was an hermitage or refuge for the King from the daily State Ceremonial of Versailles. Marly was abandoned or neglected after Louis XIV death in September 1715.  At the revolution it was sold to a merchant who dismantled it and sold off the stones and wood of the building. Today what remains is the beautiful gardens surrounding the footprint of Marly and the great water works.

Extensive archeological work has taken place on the foundation of Marly and what has been discovered gives an excellent idea of what life was like. Much details of the building exist thanks to archival material and extensive architectural drawings. Louis XIV came to Marly to relax and only 100 persons could come by INVITATION only. An even smaller number could stay overnight in the small pavilion built on either side of the palace. You can count 6 pavilion on either side. The closer the pavilion was to the main house where the King lived the closer that person was considered to be to the King.

To bring the water to Marly as shown above was a feat of engineering and a huge pumping machine had to be built so that each day the hydraulics would pump enough water to feed the pools and let the fountains play. The cost alone annually was by today’s standard in the millions of dollars.

To be invited to Marly was an honour anyone at Court was willing to fight viciously over. To suggest to the King that you wanted to be invited, if he looked at you or said a few words, you could exclaim; A Marly Sire! ( take me to Marly Sire) and maybe Louis would take the hint and then maybe not.

In the course of all the archeological investigation, even the latrines were examined. Medical pathologists were brought in to study the general health of people living at Marly at the time of Louis XIV. It turns out that it made no difference if you were the King, a great aristocrat or a minor one, or just a servant, everyone had worms. To such an extent that excrements were alive with them. Doctors of the period would examine feces and make detailed notes, even drawings of the various worms infecting a person. Some of the drawings are fanciful, like little dragons or creatures. It appears that people would live with the condition because it was a common situation in society in general, sanitation was not a concern.

Louis XIV lived to be 76 years old and died of diabetes and gangrene. Others Courtiers lived to be in their 80’s.

If Versailles with thousands of Courtiers living there had no toilets and no bathing facilities, you did your business under the great staircases or in a corner. Marly had latrines, the King used chamber pots, a special chair was designed for this purpose and he would perform this natural functions surrounded by Courtiers who were given special access to observe. The person of the King was viewed as State Property by all, so the King and Queen were on stage 24/7, what a life!

This being an age where messages from the most mundane to the very important had to be written and sent with your seal to the intended party you can imagine the message traffic. If today we have gmail and some of us get a lot of emails each day, imagine getting on average 50 letters per day or more. What to do with all those billets? Paper then was not like today and did not have the same stiffness or acidity we have in our paper. So it could be re-used and so it was as toilet paper. You only kept the most valuable or important letters or billet and the rest was put to good use. The remnants of letters were discovered by the archeologists in the latrines of Marly.

In old age Louis XIV suffered from numerous health problems, he had lost all his teeth, a common condition then for anyone over 35 years of age. His palate had been perforated by his doctors, a mishap while trying to cure something else. He had gout, he also had diabetes and the disease was so advanced that in July of 1715 his doctors suggested amputating his leg. His advisors rejected that idea, the King was brought back to Versailles, everyone knew he was condemned, he declined quickly and he died in September. Having lost all this children to various diseases, his great-grandson Louis XV became King. 

This photo shows a square area which is the footprint of the Chateau of Marly with the surrounding forest and gardens with statues. The last pair of statues were installed in the presence of the King only 2 months before his death.