The house was built on a hillside, next to a hamlet that spreads along the hill and over the plateau. At ground level, the property’s rear side is edged with a public track that leads to a craftsman’s barn before running along the river. On the other side of the track, a triangular plot of land offers space and light in front of the entrance, ensuring privacy from the house opposite it. Further up the track is a second barn, surrounded by two gardens. It looks over a raised terrace on one side of the house. Two old lime trees cast shade over this raised terrace, which forms an undisturbed sanctuary as it is largely enclosed by a protective ruin and a high stone wall against which an access staircase has been built from scratch. Several steps further down lies the garden level, made up of a vast terrace that overlooks a sheep meadow. Its sweeping 180-degree view takes in the valley, the river and the village. A stone’s throw away, on the plateau, a plot of orchard land that can be built upon is offered as an option. It covers around 1,300m².

The house

The year ‘1705’ is inscribed in the fireplace’s mantlepiece. This tells us when the house was probably made. The Guilhen family built it, towards the end of King Louis XIV’s long reign. The property stayed in this same family up to the interwar period. Its occupants included Antoine Guilhen, a wheelwright who would make cartwheels, slatted wagon sides, capstans and probably ladders and wooden fences too.

Starting with a wheelwright’s humble abode, developers took the liberty to dig an extra room out of the rock, to incorporate aspects and techniques of local architecture to extend it, to add to the facade an entrance staircase and a gallery with a saltire-patterned guardrail, and to punctuate a half-timbered extension with windows.

Random coursed stonework makes up its faces, except in the half-timbered sections, which are made of brick. The walls are strengthened with dressed stones at the corners and around the windows, which are not yet filled with glazing. The house’s partly renovated roof is hipped, punctuated with a gabled dormer on the completed section.

The ground floor
An entrance lobby leads to the living room, which can also be reached via an outdoor staircase and a gallery on the north face. The room includes a grand fireplace, alcoves, and timber or arched stone lintels. It opens out onto a terrace, which is sheltered beneath timber framework that juts out from the end of the house. The floor is a concrete screed. The next space, called the corbels room, was extended outwards through a corbel-supported half-timbered overhang with outside faces of small, reused, old bricks and a spare area waiting to be filled in with insulation. The floor is made of chestnut boards. There are rooms included for a kitchen, shower room, a separate lavatory, a bedroom and a hallway that leads to the lower room. The inside walls are insulated with hemp concrete in half-timbered partitions and with insulating lime-hemp plaster. Coating and lime whitewash are planned for the finishes. The electrics are partially installed.

The garden-level floor
Originally, there was only the vaulted cellar at this garden level. It was used to store barrels of wine and probably cheeses in the alcoves as it was the coolest room. The lower room was dug out entirely by the current owner. Upon a 25-cm-thick rubble bedding with a drain that carries humidity away outside, there is a layer of geotextile, a layer of finer stones, a layer of reinforced concrete, a 5-to-8-cm-thick layer of polyurethane insulation, a coil of polyethylene pipes for the underfloor heating, a concrete screed and mortar upon which lie Burgundy stone tiles that date back to the seventeenth century and that come from the Dijon region. The yellow dressed stones used in the frames of the openings are from Excideuil. The rubble masonry is local limestone from ruins and low walls. The facing is made of dry stone. On the ceiling the timber beams and boards are oak and chestnut. The fireplace insert works. And the room includes a sink and electrics. In an alcove, there are tanks for controlling and draining the floor-heating antifreeze.

The attic
The roof, which includes a dovecote tower, is made up of an old oak-and-chestnut timber framework built in accordance with the highest professional standards by specialist journeymen carpenters. Four dormers and two frames still need to be installed. Half of the chestnut battens have been installed, on the east side and west end. The roofing has always been protected by waterproof sheets. These photographs were taken when the sheets were changed.

The cart shelter
This outbuilding is crowned with a gable roof of flat tiles. Its north-east-facing facade is punctuated with a carriage entrance, a smaller door for the cowshed, a little door for reaching the loft, and two stone platforms from which pigeons can fly away. Inside, the two stone-floored rooms each lie beneath a loft that can be reached via a ladder. A pedestrian door opens into a little garden that serves as a vegetable patch.

The terrace
A long terrace surrounded by a retaining stone wall lies at the same height as the lower room and the vaulted cellar forming the house’s garden level. It looks out over a sheep meadow. One wall ends with a water well. Several bored stones jut out from this wall’s stonework. Posts could be inserted into them to create an arbour. The terrace stretches south-west along the ruins. It runs past a parking area and the meadow entrance, then joins the road after a bend. On the other side, it leads to the vegetable garden and cart outhouse.

The cart shelter
This outbuilding has the same shape as the other one, though it is older: it dates back to 1712. It has timber lintels and a lean-to behind it. It is equipped with electrics and a water inlet. It is surrounded by two gardens supported by a dry-stone retaining wall. The whole unit overlooks the house’s south-west terrace.