Two stone pillars mark the property’s entrance. A track leads up to an old farm building made of stone with a tiled roof. When you reach it, you see a complex of buildings arranged around a courtyard that is partly grassed and partly gravelled for vehicles to park on it: a house faces west, a lower building adjoins the house, a large barn stands on the court’s north side, and a dovecote and swimming pool lie on the south side. The dovecote is capped with a hipped roof crowned with finials, as is the house. All the roofs are covered with flat Burgundy tiles. The house has two hipped dormers on its roof. The quoins and door and window surrounds are made of dressed stone left exposed.

In the lower building that extends the house on one side, a covered passageway leads to a vast garden behind it. Trees of different species tower here. The garden offers a sweeping view of the hills and the rooftops of the old village nearby.

Back in the courtyard, beside the swimming pool, stone steps lead down to an orchard enclosed with dry-stone walls.

The house

The house has a ground floor, a first floor and a loft space. The elevations are rendered with a pale beige lime coating, which brings out the matt green paintwork of the shutters fitted on the windows. Four different glazed doors lead into the dwelling. The roofing was renovated in 2018. Lawns, shrubs and trees surround the house and wisteria grows up one side of it.

The ground floor
The first door leads into one of the house’s hallways. Exposed oak beams run across its ceiling and Burgundy stone adorns its floor. Remnants of a bread oven with old tomette tiles remind us of the house’s farming origins. Beside it there is a utility room. A bull’s-eye window casts natural light upon an old stone sink and the walls are lime-coated. A solid-timber door of oak boards adorned with 17th-century ironwork hides a staircase from the same period. The room connects to a vast fitted kitchen with several cupboards. An open stone fireplace heats up this kitchen, which has wood strip flooring.

Another hallway lies in line with this room. It has wood strip flooring and red walls, which bring out its white-painted ceiling beams. The room connects to a lounge, which also has wood strip flooring. This lounge is spacious and flooded with natural light from many windows, which offer views of the garden and the dovecote. Further on, there is a room for relaxation, adorned with a timber-mantel fireplace and bookshelves.

Back in the red hallway, a remarkable glazed partition of small panes beneath a fanlight gives a view of another room, which serves as a cloakroom and leads outside through a door. This large hallway connects to two bedrooms with floors of old tomette tiles. The first of these two bedrooms has a grey-marble fireplace, not in working order, and an en-suite bathroom that features a cast-iron bathtub with lion-paw feet and a white-porcelain washbasin. On the other side of the hallway, there is a second bedroom, which is very spacious. It has an en-suite bathroom, a separate lavatory and a mosaic floor of geometric patterns.

The upstairs
A landing, which has remained intact since the 17th century beneath exposed beams, leads though a solid-oak door to a bright, spacious living room fitted with cupboards and punctuated with two timber pillars. A door painted green leads to a shower room that is entirely tiled. Another door leads to a bedroom, which stands out for its glazed door and its court-facing window. A large hallway connects to a second bedroom, then to a third one with an adjoining bathroom that has stayed in its original style: its old beams, bathtub and white-porcelain washbasin have been preserved. Throughout this level, terracotta floor tiles underline the charming authenticity of the dwelling. At the end of the corridor, there is a room that currently serves as an office. Back in the living room, a ladder leads up to the loft space. This loft, beneath a roof frame of oak purlins, could be converted.