Restoring a grand house in Lower Normandy
La Pommeraie started life in 1902 as a single storey cottage with a vegetable garden at the front. By 1946, the then owner, a Parisien banker, elevated the house to a three storey grand maison with landscaping.
In the next few decades it passed through the family and then into the hands of new ‘caretakers’.
We bought the house in December 2020 from English owners who used the property as a holiday home for over 30 years. This is a big old property sitting in a landscape of gardens, an old orchard and woodland, far too big to have as a holiday home when you only visit for a few weeks of the year! So by the time the property came to market in 2020 there was, as you can imagine, a lot of deterioration to the fabric of the building internally and nature had done what it does very well and established itself externally as a force to be reckoned with!
Brambles, Ivy, spiders and mould
Moving into a house in March when the outside temperatures are still clinging onto the winter season and Spring hasn’t yet woken up, presents challenges at the best of times. La Pommeraie threw up extra challenges because it has been empty and shuttered for over 5 years without any sunlight or fresh air. In fact the inside temperature of the rooms was colder than the temperature outside, with little more than a 6kw log burner as the main heat source for the whole house!
Our first tasks were both exciting and challenging. Settling in, by that we mean choosing a room to camp in! Getting a gas bottle connected for cooking, daring to fire up the old water heater and scouring the land for dry wood for the tiny log burner, our main heat source for the whole house The wine helped
A visit from an old friend
In the first summer at La Pommeraie we had unexpected visitors to our gates. A French lady and her husband approach us as the former occupants, as children back in the 1950’s. From that visit we received some fabulous photos from the Madame and they have been inspirational in helping us understand the property and its history.
We continue to log and photograph our adventures and the life of La Pommeraie and we hope you’ll enjoy following us through our social media or book a stay in the beautifully renovated rooms of the Chambre D’Hôte.
