It was instant love when we walked into the courtyard of La Mothe in 1989, we knew immediately that we had found our bit of France; the dream became reality and within a few months we were the proud owners of La Mothe.
La Mothe is a typical Perigordine “Fermette” or little farm, the main house with its working buildings surrounding the courtyard, even more unique in that La Mothe had its own bakehouse and still has a working well, 9 metres of cool clear spring water, (La Mothe has mains water) still in use for watering flowers etc.
Our immediate objective on the first phase of development was to renovate the main house to a habitable state for ourselves by initially introducing essential services such as water, Electric and drainage.
Our aim was always to preserve the character of the “farmhouse” not always easy when adding modern lifestyle facilities such as kitchen and bathroom, which did not exist in old farmhouses.
The integrity of the house has been preserved by retaining sandstone walls, blackened chestnut beams, many of which were originally hand-cut and dated to approx 400 years.
Floors have been laid in some areas using authentic flagstones or quarry tiles, all providing a simple interior and background to our furniture.
As we settled into a French lifestyle, we realised the need to provide ourselves with an income to offset some of the renovation costs; we decided to renovate part of the main house and the bakehouse into ‘gite’ holiday accommodation.
Colin carried out the designs and, once statuary approvals were granted, work commenced in 1999 - the results were pleasing, and provided high class accommodation.
To date our ‘gite’ business has been highly successful several guests now returning for their 4th year; several have so fallen in love with the lifestyle, they are, with our help, now proud owners themselves of French property.
We are located between the famous Bastide village of Monpazier and mediaeval village of Belves, and within an hour’s drive of ancient towns such as Bergerac and Perigueux - blending with today’s lifestyle shopping, including out of town hypermarkets - our location has benefited from the development of Bergerac airport, with Flybe, Ryanair and Jet2 making cheap UK flights frequent and easy.
We have decided, after almost 20 years, to ‘move on’ and plan for retirement. It has been an emotional wrench but after lots of discussion we feel the time is right, we are now looking for someone to continue the ‘dream’.
That 'someone' will take on this exceptional French farmhouse and business; marvel at the many deer grazing in the early morning or dusk across the fields; be fascinated by our resident colony of bats in the barn; the best bit, to sit out late on a summers night with a glass of something and marvel at the black starlit sky.
Potential
It is a cliché but there is still huge potential to develop the original barns into extra accommodation, workshops, artist's studios or galleries for example.
The Granary is configured in such a way that it can easily be reinstated into the main house or leave as stand-alone guest accommodation.
The Granary provides a large living or dining room leading directly from the kitchen, and the existing bedroom could be linked to the second bedroom with a shared “on suite” bathroom arrangement if required.
