small bits of history

As with many of the houses around here which are 'old' it is difficult to say how old our house really is. There has probably been a dwelling here for hundreds of years.

In its present incarnation it is at least 200 yrs old. We know this as there is a bit of grafitti scraped into the soft tuffeau stone just by the barn door which says 1815.

grafitti near barn door

A typical 'Touraine Longere' it started out as a 1, possibly 2 room farmhouse with attached barn on one side and a breadoven in a niche on the other. The breadoven will have been open to the front but protected by walls on 2 sides.  Somewhere in recent past--say 70's the breadoven was enclosed, a doorway was made through the outside wall between the main room and the breadoven and an extension was added on the other side--where we now have our kitchen dining area. We can tell due to the varying thicknesses of the stone walls which are original and which are 'modern'. All of these changes have created a long rambling house.

 

In what is now our living room there's an 'evier' [stone sink] with a larder cupboard above it.  The sink has been blocked but you can still see the runnel in the outside wall where the water would have run out. No tap of course. Water would have come from the communal 'puits' [well] which the various houses in our hamlet shared--none of the houses have their own well. Though not in use there's water in it - we checked.

sink with larder cupboard above

stone sink

 

Other traces we've found are the carpenter's marks on some of the massive beams we have. We feel we're pretty lucky to get to live with these small signs of history.

carptenter's marks in lliving room