A Tuscan-style farmhouse with 51 hectares of grounds on a hill between
the Cévennes mountains and the scrubland of France's Gard department
the Cévennes mountains and the scrubland of France's Gard department
Alès,
GARD
languedoc-roussillon
30100
FR
Location
The property is nestled in the Cévennes foothills in the north of France’s Gard department. The views it enjoys are spectacular. To the east, it looks out over 3,800 hectares of scrubland listed as a Natura 2000 conservation area. An outcrop that paragliders cherish towers over this splendid expanse. To the west, the property overlooks the province’s hilly terrain, a place of rich local history. And to the south is a valley of farmland from which a lane winds up to the property. The house is a haven of calm tucked away in these beautiful foothills. It is protected from the noise of modern life yet close enough to both a hub of activity and the area’s most beautiful sites: the town of Uzès, the Cévennes countryside and the Lussan scrubland. Uzès is just a 30-minute drive away. Nîmes, with its airport and high-speed rail station, is under an hour away by car, as are motorways.
Description
At the end of a tarmac road, you see the southern side on the farmhouse on a hill, which was probably once a Roman oppidum. One of its towers rises at the corner of the edifice; the other stands symmetrically to it, behind a cluster of trees. The site used to be an agricultural building. Its north wing was the first section to be built. Restoration works that were completed in 1714 transformed it, giving it its Florentine style of today. Later, it was a refuge for Camisards – Huguenot rebels in the Cévennes region; a prison for Italian soldiers; and a place of resistance and conflict – bullet holes and wall inscriptions attest to this. Today, it looks out over the surrounding countryside and the property’s grounds: an unbroken expanse of 51 hectares made up of olive groves, meadows and scrubland.
The building complex encloses a courtyard. A passage for horses cuts through its south wing, forming a carriage entrance. The outer walls are rendered with old lime coating beneath which a bond of rounded limestone rocks can be seen.
The property’s southern face is flanked with two corner towers. Windows in line with each other punctuate its facade, either side of its basket-handle archway that looks out over a swimming pool and pool house. On the first floor, four tall, narrow windows are spaced out more evenly and symmetrically, with bull’s eye windows beneath the eaves. The towers’ front and side walls are punctuated with a window on each floor. These windows are identically sized. The carriage-entrance gate is painted red, as are the window shutters, on the edifice’s south side and its other faces too. The north and west wings are now hidden behind two metal barns – tokens of the property’s recent agricultural activity.
The eastern face looks out across an endless view that stretches all the way to the Alps. The different building sections are crowned with hipped or gable roofs adorned with barrel tiles and underlined with double-row génoise cornices. They house two apartments, an oratory and annexes formerly used for agriculture, silkworm farming and business.
The building complex encloses a courtyard. A passage for horses cuts through its south wing, forming a carriage entrance. The outer walls are rendered with old lime coating beneath which a bond of rounded limestone rocks can be seen.
The property’s southern face is flanked with two corner towers. Windows in line with each other punctuate its facade, either side of its basket-handle archway that looks out over a swimming pool and pool house. On the first floor, four tall, narrow windows are spaced out more evenly and symmetrically, with bull’s eye windows beneath the eaves. The towers’ front and side walls are punctuated with a window on each floor. These windows are identically sized. The carriage-entrance gate is painted red, as are the window shutters, on the edifice’s south side and its other faces too. The north and west wings are now hidden behind two metal barns – tokens of the property’s recent agricultural activity.
The eastern face looks out across an endless view that stretches all the way to the Alps. The different building sections are crowned with hipped or gable roofs adorned with barrel tiles and underlined with double-row génoise cornices. They house two apartments, an oratory and annexes formerly used for agriculture, silkworm farming and business.
South wing – Apartment
This section of the farmhouse has been entirely restored. Today it is a living space. You reach the first apartment via the main entrance in the courtyard.
The ground floor
At the top of an outside flight of three steps, a landing leads to a vaulted room to the west. This room currently serves as an office. A courtyard window on its north side and a driveway window on its south side fill it with daylight. Its floor is tiled and its ceiling is made up of groined vaults.
The first floor
A double flight of tiled stonework stairs with a banister takes you to the first floor. This floor is divided into several rooms either side of the staircase. These rooms are spread over the wing’s full length, which includes the two towers. The lath-and-plaster ceilings offer a generous height and the rooms are filled with daylight from many windows facing south, east and west. To the east, three south-facing windows bring light into a vast room that serves as a lounge and features a dressed-stone fireplace. Beyond it lies a bedroom with windows on its east and south sides and a bathroom on the north side. The bedroom’s floors are covered in old terracotta tiles and the living room is adorned with more recent tiling. The western side of this storey is made up of a kitchen, a shower room and two bedrooms – one of which is in the tower, bathed in daylight from its two windows. The floors are covered in glazed terracotta tiles in very good condition.
The second floor
The next double flight of timber stairs leads to the second floor, which is divided into several rooms in a layout similar to the storey below it. An eastern door leads to a row of rooms intended for practising art and music. The first room, used for practising music, is brightened somewhat by light from three bull’s eye windows and a skylight. The second room, which is brighter, is in the tower’s top floor. It is an artist’s studio with a south-facing view over the agricultural plain and an eastern view that stretches over mountains all the way to western Europe’s highest peak. Its floors are covered in terracotta tiling. At the other end, above the first-floor kitchen, a shower room leads to the western tower’s bedroom. The floors are covered in hexagonal tomette tiles and painted tiles. Here too, a commanding position brings considerable daylight inside and offers unrivalled views.
East wing – Apartment and spaces for agriculture
This part of the building is divided between a living area on the ground floor’s south side and spaces that attest to the property’s agricultural past on two independent floors over which the east wing extends.
Next to the apartment and above it are several spaces preserved from a time when cattle, horses and sheep lived on the ground floor and when harvests were stored on the floor above it. This wing includes various features that are typical of local rural architecture. On the ground floor is an extensive cowshed that faces the grounds in the north-west corner. It has kept its racks, troughs and hooks. On the first floor is a deep loggia built into the apartment. It overlooks the courtyard and can be reached via a stone staircase. A court-facing dovecote interrupts the wing’s horizontal line of roofing: its structure capped with a hipped roof rises above the rest of the roof. A stone lintel also faces the court. The year 1714 is engraved into it, marking the point in time when the edifice’s restoration works were completed.
The ground floor
You enter the apartment from the courtyard’s south-east corner. All the rooms are vaulted with groined vaults and a round-arch barrel vault running from east to west. They form a solid base. The floors are covered in hexagonal terracotta tomette tiles.
Just beyond the entrance, a lounge opens out as a central living space. A kitchen extends it. At the apartment’s southern end where it joins the edifice’s south wing, a hallway connects to a library and a bedroom, as well as a passage leading to outside the farmhouse. At the other end of the living room, a brick partition splits the wide barrel vault between a bedroom overlooking the courtyard and a bathroom with a view of the scrubland and the neighbouring mountain Mont Bouquet.
West wing – oratory and spaces for agriculture and business
The west wing is the same size as the east wing. It is made up of two floors. A metal barn currently hides its outer wall. This barn was initially built to shelter tractors and agricultural machinery.
The ground floor
On the ground floor, a large room is now used for a fruit and vegetable business. A traditional country ceiling separates this space from the floor above it.
An oratory underlines the property’s importance in the 18th century. The entrance to the oratory is set back, protected from bad weather by a segmental archway. The door to this sacred area is subtly embellished with a rosemary branch. Beyond it, you find yourself in a spot devoted to prayer. Indeed, the place was still used for prayer in the twentieth century, keeping its religious purpose for prisoners in the Second World War. These prisoners left their mark on the building, counting their days of imprisonment with a blue chalk on the supporting pier of a passage that leads to the cellar under the tower.
The first floor
You can only reach the first floor from the north wing. This floor is currently home to several species of nocturnal birds of prey: eagle owls, tawny owls and barn owls share this welcoming sanctuary of calm.
North wing – cellar, pigsty, silkworm room and covered court area
This is the farmhouse’s oldest section. It is taller than the other wings and is made up of two floors.
A magnificent covered court area runs along its south-facing side, opening out into the main courtyard. Tall, broad pinewood pillars built into the walls support it. This covered area offers refreshing shade on hot summer days. And in autumn, it provides shelter when the first thunderstorms rain down on the local region. It houses two ground-floor rooms with stone groined vaults: a pigsty and a cellar.
In the courtyard’s north-east corner stands an open stone staircase that was built before the east wing’s stone staircase was. It leads up to a silkworm room, a vast open space equivalent to two storeys in height that extends right up to the underside of the roof. Each corner has kept its fireplace, which would be used to keep the silkworms warm. Uneven stones serve as a floor tiling. Broad windows fill the room with soft daylight. On the room’s south side, a door leads to the west wing’s first floor.
Swimming pool and pool house
A swimming pool of around 4.5m x 8m lies just south of the edifice. You can easily reach it from the building by crossing the driveway that runs along its south face. The swimming pool looks out at the horizon, enclosed by a stone poolside and a low wall that separates it from the farmhouse. Several trees on the pool’s west side offer refreshing shade and protection from sunburn. And a summer kitchen and shower room can be enjoyed in a neighbouring pool house.
Grounds
The property’s grounds cover over 51 hectares and mostly extend north of the farmhouse. Scrubland and cultivated farmland edge the grounds. A footpath snakes all the way around the grounds, which are made up of olive groves, meadows and scrub. Several viewpoints offer unique perspectives and give the chance to admire the building in its surroundings, perched on a hill.
Our opinion
The thick old walls give a deep sense of calm and peace. But home on this land is hardly limited to the interior: the property offers beautiful natural surroundings to contemplate. Living here means more than inhabiting the building. It means walking beneath the carriage entrance with the noble gait and elegance of past centuries. It means breathing in the spellbinding fragrances of thyme and lavender as you stroll through bucolic grounds. It means riding through enchanting meadows and wandering delightful olive groves. The restoration works that have been carried out discreetly and respectfully on one part of the building have preserved many original features: simple, precious tokens of previous chapters in this farmhouse’s story. And now the next exciting chapter is waiting to be written.
1 450 000 €
Fees at the Vendor’s expense
Reference 129065
| Land registry surface area | 51 ha 44 a 59 ca |
| Main building surface area | 900 m2 |
| Number of bedrooms | 7 |
| Outbuilding surface area | 407.81 m2 |
Aucune procédure en cours menée sur le fondement des articles 29-1 A et 29-1 de la loi n°65-557 du 10 juillet 1965 et de l’article L.615-6 du CCH
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NB: The above information is not only the result of our visit to the property; it is also based on information provided by the current owner. It is by no means comprehensive or strictly accurate especially where surface areas and construction dates are concerned. We cannot, therefore, be held liable for any misrepresentation.
