In this section are details about the house, history as we discover it etc. But first a bit about the house.

After three years of searching, in June 2009 we finally found our French home.  In November 2006 we left the UK thinking that we would have a look for 2 – 3 months and find our ideal house.  We were wrong!.  After looking at about 105 houses we can honestly say we saw about 100 that we were not remotely interested in.  This is not the ideal house, the size is a little large for two people. It took until 18th December before we finally got the keys.

The house we bought in Lasgraisses is one of only two houses that we viewed that had old and interesting features left, the other house is in a village about 5 km from here and was a rental property that we tried unsuccessfully to rent in December 2008.

The House

It is about 350 – 400 years old and is a type of house known as a Masion de Maitre, a Masters House built for a wealthy person.  It has 80 cm external stone walls and some 80cm internal cross walls, the wood work is in oak and is extremely hard to drill / screw into, all windows doors are in oak The floorboard are 40mm oak and have old tommettes floor tiles on top of these.  Two rooms have wood floors, the lounge with a fruit tree wood floor and the maids lounge floor.

The Masion de Maitre of the 18th and 19th century is a bit like an English Georgian house, symmetrical around a large central hall, staircase four rooms on each floor, usually all 5 x 5 metres or two rooms 5 x 5 and two 5 x 3 metre each floor. Our house is almost symmetrical but has the stairs on one side off the central hall, it also has ten room each floor and six more in the cellar. Ceilings are 3 metres, cellar is 2.8 metres

The external foot print is 14 metres by 27 metres, so it is very big, the one toilet is some 80 feet from our bedroom, an en suit is planed for late 2010.

The house had not been lived in for 50 years and had only been used for a few weeks a year for 25 years, it was last decorated / modernised in about 1890.  It had no heating.  It had running water, mainly through the holes in the roof, no hot water had ever been installed, nearly every room has a fire place, most are marble and in very good condition.  The house had very basic wiring, all in 1mm or 1.5mm cable, a quick test meter reading showed that 1.7 kw could be supplied on most circuits.  The house had a three phase supply, 3 x 2 kw so a kettle was the biggest appliance that could be used without tripping the supply.  We now have a 12kw single phase supply which is far more flexible although nothing like a UK supply.  The French do not have instant electric showers and tend to have gas hobs and electric ovens.  The house had no earth circuits anywhere!

The house has about 12600 mtrs 2, over 3 acres of land, the only village house we have seen with more than a samll courtyard outside space, very rare