History
History of garrigue
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Finding out information about our house is both fascinating and tricky. You hear stories and find 'facts' but then they start to contradict each other. Here is our best estimation of Garrigue's history.
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Garrigue
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Garrigue translates as 'scrubland' or 'unfarmable land'. This isn't surprising as the ground is incredibly rocky under the grass and it slopes down to the stream. The Château Garrigue stood opposite our house. There is little evidence of it now, other than an old pigeonniere with a date stone of 1729.
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You can see from the stonework and oak beams that our house is built in the same method as the château so we have every reason to think it's the same age - coming up to its 300 year birthday.
Previous uses
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Garrigue was principally worker's cottages designed to feed into the main château from around 1729 onwards. We suspect our house (to the right of our pigeonniere tower) was two small cottages that housed families working at subsistence level. They probably had 10-12 cattle. The part of our building to the left of the pigeonniere (where the cottages are today) was a large barn that used to stable the cows.
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The principal 20th century owners lived in the property for over 80 years. The family operated the cattle farm until 1996 when they retired. We know them a little as they now live in Eymet. They were eager to see what had been done to the building.
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The last owners arrived in Christmas 1999. An English couple who still live locally, and they put the serious work into converting Garrigue. They gave it a new roof, new plumbing, new electrics, converted the barn into three gîtes and installed the swimming pool.
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We purchased Garrigue in 2016 and gave it a total style change including new bathrooms and kitchens in all the cottages. We made major changes to our own house too.
