We are Mark and Ingrid Burling, two expats currently restoring a 3.5 acre plot in Charente and its four buldings into a retreat centre for burned-out city types, people suffering from PTSD and anyone who seeks respite or just wishes to find back to themselves.
Proudly placed in the snail capital of France, and with bucolic Charente terrain embracing it, the village of St Claud boasts the very specialities for which France is so famous: brandy, pate de fois gras, duck, wild boar, mushrooms, oysters, and of course the local speciality - Pineau - all of this essential for a couple of foodies like us. There are also many festivals here for culture vultures which made it even more interesting.
I fell in love with the property during our first visit, one of five made overall between March and June this year (2012), and then embarked on persuading Mark to see the pathway to the wonderful future that lay ahead, if it was restored and brought back to life, a perspective which was initially shrouded from him. He is now fully on board and, after buying it in June, has thrown himself into it with amazing elan.
The estate
Consisting of a 500m2 Maison Principale, flanked by a 3-bedroom gite on one side and a studio on the other, see pictures below, with another 500m2 barn nearby, the property had not been tended for 8 years other than by a farmer coming to mow the grass for free in exchange for the hay, see the hero image of this post (above), and some tenants in the gite who were using it as a base for their own property search.
The subject of extensive renovations by the previous owners 8 years ago, the gite and studio are all in excellent repair, having had full renovations including full insulation, heating, lighting, plumbing, double-glazing and floors, fully fitted bathroom and kitchen and a wonderful log-burner.
The studio similarly was in good condition on purchase, barring a clean, some decorations, and the installation of some appliances and furniture, which we are undertaking now.
Only the main house has remained untouched, relatvely speaking, but it was the subject or considerable work before then: double-glazing, new post-and-beam ceilings, a new floor in the loft, double-glazing, and stripping out old plaster etc. All properties barring the barn had new crepie applied. The pictures below show the staggering difference between the 'before' and 'after' pictures of those works. Check it out and marvel.
The front and back of the house before the works 8 years ago:
And below, how it looked after the works were concluded, as we saw it on the Mercure website: https://www.groupe-mercure.com. The cottage, where we live, is clearly visible on the left, and the studio on the right. As you can see, the work brought out the property's grandeur:
And here it is in all its Summer glory: the tree on the right is a giant plum tree
Despite having seen the Mercure image before our first visit, we were still not prepared for the staggeringly elegant proportions of what greeted us when we first stepped inside. See the next pictures for more of a clue.
The first picture, below, was taken from the staircase in the main house, looking down the entire length of the ront of the house. And this is just the hallway!
You can see me standing in the front doorway, looking into what will be the open dining room with a log fire (eventually). The room just to the left if it and out of sight is an enormous kitchen looking onto the garden. Straight ahead of me is a door into the scullery, and to my left is a door into an enormous double-salon. All of the rooms look onto the garden.
As a special point of interest to builders, you can clearly see the post-and-beam ceiling installed, which consists of clay tiles suspended from the wooden joists, a highly insulating material, but a nightmare to fix lights into.... ho hum....
If you turn right from where I am in the above picture, and walk to the end and then turn around, this is the view that you see, up the hallway, and showing the stairs:
As you can see it is an immense space, and offers wonderful potential: imagine if you will, a white tiled floor with little black diamonds, under-floor heating (possibly), and some sofas, chairs and palm trees here.
There will be a toilet under the stairs - you can see there is a door under the stairs too, which leads to the patio in front of the studio. Perfect.
The dining room - effectively behind you in the above picture - will have a long table and our wonderful carved French sideboard and ornate mirrors, many of which we are using in the gite at present, but which will be moved over when the main house is ready.
The scullery
The next three images show the view from the (green) scullery into the garden in Summer time, and the (brown) kitchen.
I'm seeing an office with storage cupboards in the scullery and a giant range in the kitchen, with lots of long shelving for my pots and chef's utensils, a large table and a working fire with chairs beside it for reading and dozing. Our grand piano will go into the salon, although is currently located in the gite.
This is the scullery, see below. l finally get a larder! And what a larder it is! Crumbling plaster, lead paint everywhere, but an oh-so poetic view into the garden. Oh my! -
The house is beautifully cool in Summer and will be warm in Winter due to its double-glazing and the post-and-beam ceilings. The giant barley-twist mirror,was left for us by the previous owners. We think will be gilded and then re-located in the dining room or kitchen as we need the house to be light and opulent.
The culinary hub of the house
The kitchen with its lovely central fireplace, below. Think away the flaking paint and imagine it with a tiled hearth and/or Swedish log burner (more green than an ordinary fire or log burning stove - and gaining in popularity for it in France). The scullery is on the other side of the fireplace, and its fireplace shares the same chimneystack.
The kitchen has the french window below and a giant window opening into the back garden, a gloriously verdant enclave. The kitchen has electrical powerpoints, cable, and a sewerage pipe, so most amenities are covered. We both dream of breakfasting in this room, or of casual dining with friends: The floor is, unfortunately, a bit like an ocean and needs relaying but it will be beautiful when finished.
The floors need to be taken up, as the wooden boards are like an ocean, and the visibly rotten joists need replacing. As there is only rammed earth underneath and no insulation and we will be installing a big range, the floor may need strengthening, so we may put down a damp proof course and then concrete, followed by tiles for easy cleaning. The floor is currently freezing as not insulated and is therefore not comfortable. Any floor boards will be saved and used upstairs where there are a fair few that need replacing.
The floor is a story in itself
The pattern is beautiful - each floor consists of multiple quadrants of three boards each, set in between thinner runners or frames, to form a kind of parquet. These runners (my word for them) go vertically and horizontally to form the frame around each parquet quadrant, and where the verticals meet with the horizontals, the points dovetail into each other - stunning work.
Our neighbour, Jean-Marc, who grew up in the house and has many happy memories of it to share, told us it is walnut, and I am inclined to agree, but a local flooring man said he thought it was oak. The reason for my disagreement is that walnut was then considered to be the height of fashion, and this house was built for a man with a prestigious career in the army. I can see that further research beckons, but the colour of the floor boards is gorgeous. I washed them off to check. More about it in another post!...
Unique in every way
The whole house is rather unusual as it boasts space for four bedrooms with bathrooms, but has enormous open spaces additionally. Downstairs it's the hallway and upstairs it's the landing. These would make more bedrooms, if someone was inclined to put the walls in, but this would make the entire house dark in the centre, strangle it and cause it to lose its open heart, which we love and which we believe makes it stand out.
If you ever walk onto the landing in the sunlight, see below, you will know why. It is palatial and speaks of sofas, easy chairs, reading nooks, side tables wth sherry decanters and aperitifs abounding, a few statues, low lights and palm and citrus trees everywhere. This is not a place to hide in your room. This is a place for lounge-lizards and story-tellers.
The landing looking down towards the staircase, see image below. Behind you is another ten metres of landing going back to the first bedroom, which overlooks the front courtyard and our glorious linden tree. You can spy it from all of these windows. It is the crowning glory of the house and much admired by everyone in our street.
We have some architect-designed plans commissioned by the previous owner, in which she looked at carving up the house for more bedrooms, but the notion creates an inauspicious space in Feng Shui, dividing the entire house in two by putting the staircase in the middle, which speaks of division in the family, and possbly divorce.
Furthermore financial losses would beckon because by having the staircase immediately in front of the front door, rather than to the side as it is now, any positve energies coming in and going upstairs, would flow immediately back down and out of the door again. No Asian person will ever buy a house with the staircase in front of the door. It is always best to the side.
There are plans available for upstairs too, but they don't work well either. These plans put in so many bathrooms that there are actually three in a row. I take the view that if each bedroom has a bathroom, then you do not need yet another one on that floor, especially. At the very most all you need is a toilet, but that is all.
The downstairs plan
I'll just focus on the kitchen: to put an L-shaped kitchen in this room is a waste of the available space. L-shaped kitchens don't work very well as they do not incorporate an island to make the working triangle you need. I think I know why they did it this way - they thought that with the rather low-lying window opening inwards, this meant you could not have a work surface there, but this is wrong and, if I may say so, uninspired.
Apart from that, if I was going to spend 2400 euros on such a design, I would be asking the architect to work a good deal harder than this to resolve such an issue.
The solution
I have worked out a way of having a u-shaped kitchen, despite the low-ish opening window. I shall incorporate a small kitchen unit on wheels to form part of the u-shape work surface in front of that window, but it will be on wheels and so it can be wheeled out onto the terrace for barbeque and wok cookery. Behind the work unit on wheels, will be a window seat. A small interruption in the work surface where the wheeled item sits, is a small price to pay for a big gain such as a window seat, being able to open the windows AND having a dedicated wok station. Yay and voila!
And here is the plan for the upstairs, see below:
Notice the three bathrooms in a row, at the bottom of the above plan and how boxy this makes all the current rooms. They will entirely lack flow and the grandeur of the house, which is its hallmark, will be lost. To us, this would be a crying shame.
Sleeping quarters
So let's look at the floor space as it is now....below is an image of the master bedroom, above the living room (salon). If you turn around it is as big again, so needs to be split back into its original form, which would be two or three bedrooms. It boasts stunning views over the garden and will easily have enough space for a bathroom and wardrobe:
The picture below shows you the other end of the master bedroom as it is now, if you just turned around after taking the above picture. It measures around 40m X 8m! Good grief!
The room above used to be three smaller rooms, actually, but we will only be taking it down to two. We believe that what makes this house so special are the gallant proportions and the flow as you walk through. They sing out to you, as you move around it, and I believe you need to listen to that, and really take it on board.
We like large master bedrooms and don't subscribe to the modern idea of splitting them into as many small rooms as you can fit in, because this invariably results in a poky interior. We have seen some horrible examples of this, where people completely destroyed the heart of their house, and didn't even use the newly made rooms afterwards.
It's fine to split rooms if you are desperate and need the rental, but we avoided it in our last house, and the master bedroom was a joy to use and a leading draw when we sold the house. It was the only one left in the street that was still as it had been originally built. All others were carved up and the general consensus among estate agents and buyers was that the houses lost their charm because of that.
For this reason and because we wish to preserve the spirit of the house, we will create a bathroom that will be inside the bedroom, through an open gap, rather than a full wall runing across that part of the room to form a total division. This way, when you enter the bedroom, you will be able to glance into the bathroom area and see, in the centre of the stud wall, that a piece is missing.
In this gap you will glimpse two beautiful basins with venetian mirrors, but the shower and toilet will be out of view, one right and one left, on either side of the basins and behind the two right and left hand pieces of studwalls for privacy. This will be fine for couples staying together, and help us to avoid the French bathroom tax (your council tax increases with every bathroom you add). Moreover, flow matters to us, and we will be seeking to ensure it stays as good as it is now.
The menu
Now that I've shared the overall plans for the Maison Principale for you, it remains only for me to give a feel for how the centre will be run. Check out future posts about our discoveries and work on the land, and our plans for the potager, pond, natural swimming pool, and orchard, where we have peach, plum, mirabelles, hazelnut and walnuts trees.
The centre will eventually run a mixed schedule of courses for writers, actors, dancers, musicians and others, as well as all manner of other activities, such as cooking, gardening, and possibly leadership coaching. Through these we hope people can find back to themselves or discover a new life that they want to lead, or simply develop themselves to the next level of their personal enlightenment.
People will be able to join others in a group, or travel to stay here and book one-on-one coaching with me, or attend volunteer weeks where, in exchange for bed and board, they can work 5 hours per day, and help us to till the land, work on the buildings and develop the centre. The rest of the time will be theirs and of course we will always be making excursions and outings. There is great flexibility here.
Ever since we came here we have found an enormous peace in doing a day of physical labour with other, like-minded people. You heal yourself - and others - as you go. You get fit and feel well, eat well, sleep well, and your body and mind slowly rebalance and harmonise. It is truly magical. We'd love for you to experience this too. Email me at ingrid.burling@mac.com to make enquiries about any aspect of our work or joining us.
Our backgrounds
As trained musicians and business people, we have the background to make this work. Mark was the Administration Manager at Harvey Nichols for 22 years and latterly worked in a consultative role in Local Government. He also has a qualification as a teacher. He is a super manager of teams, was trusted deeply by his employers wherever he worked and built such warm relationships with his staff, thet we were invited to their weddings.
I've been a Master Transformation Coach for 21 years, and am an Accelerated Learning Trainer, which means that I know how the brain learns and processes new material best. I have, in addition to this, taken care to complete 7 years training as a healer with various teachers and mentors. I've been a meditator for 30 years (TM) and am now also a trained chef. I completed my training in Thailand, when we lived there from 2012-2016. It included 220 dishes, fruit carving, food history and Royal Thai cuisine.
“Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one.” Marianne Williamson
I will not run all of the courses here. Rather we expect to have some visiting teachers and so there will be a healthy mix of people coming and going, hopefully from all around the world. We hope you will be one of them.
In uniting my skills in the running of the centre, I am starting with the launch of this blog and with establishing myself as a food writer and chef - please see my articles in www.simplyfrenchlivingmagazine.com, and look out for my culinary website which will launch after this. If you sign up to this blog, you will get notifcations of new posts directly into your inbox. Please feel free to comment and send me ideas or ask for help.
Our first peach of the Summer this year:
I incorporated it and six others into a peach tartlet, which we consumed for afternoon tea, with our good friend Karl, who helped us move in, and who we loved dearly. This blog post is dedicated to you, Karl. We miss you. RIP.
*****
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