A Bit Of History

We bought the house on 18th December 2009, the house was sold by the courts to pay for the care of the owner Madame Reilhac who was suffering from dementia, we think also it was for the care of her disabled daughter.

In 1839 the house was owned by the Carriol family. Mademoiselle Carriol, born 5th December 1918 married Alain Reilhac, they had a daughter in 1949 who is disabled. We bought the house from Madame Reilhac, she inherited it from her family in 1985 but we are fairly certain it was not occupied in at this time.

We are trying to find the history of the house but this is not easy. The local Priest, Jean (he is 81) has told us that the house has been empty for fifty years. This seems about right as we found newspapers and magazines from the mid fifties. We have met members of the Carriol family but they do not know much about it. One has an aunt with a house from 1870 and thinks our lobby doors are the same style, we think much of the decor was from this period. Some of the doors in the dining room are the same as those we have seen in a local chateau and were told these were four hundred years old. The house was originally less than half its current size, just the kitchen, dining room lobby and lounge, the rest we think was added not long after. The interior doors are oak and are all of similar style but some are clearly older. The lounge and dining room have tall double doors, probably from the make over in 1870 ish. The kitchen and lower corridor have the oldest windows, again I think all the other windows were changed 1870 and French windows added to the lounge and dining room. The maids kitchen has French windows but it is clear that these replaced ordinary windows. The Maids rooms had their own electric supply so these rooms ( or two of them)may have been rented as a shop, also the door from the upper corridor to these rooms had been bricked up. The steps to the cellar have a stone marked 1679, there are marks on the walls showing that changes have been made, the steps would have ended up under the lounge. What would have been an outside wall in the cellar has arrow slits, so this could have been a fortified house. We have been told that part of the cellar was used as a

The wall here is 90 cm thick and the door surround has has old bolt holes

This cellar door is thicker that the rest, it open into the room, has a very strong frame. There is only a very small window. The door has a small grill, could this be the old prison door? The small hole near the bottom is to let cats in / out to catch rats and mice

prison to hold prisoners in transit, this was in the reign of Louis 14th, so this dates to 1638 - 1715. One of the cellar rooms has a much stronger door with a small bared window, like a prison cell. Our neighbor Thierry produced and old book recovered from our house, the book is a collection of music sheets and hand written scores, so some one in the house composed music. We are told that the house had massive amounts of old documents but these were taken out by the Mairie and burnt many years ago.