It’s been a few days since my last post, so it’s time to catch you up with the rest of our stay in the Dordogne/Périgord region. Now, I know you’re probably tired of hearing about chateaux, so I’ll try and keep this short and give you the highlights of the last three we visited during our stay in Sarlat. They do provide a nice cross-section, however, of the transition from medieval castle to Renaissance chateau.
First up was Chateau de Puymartin just 9 kms from Sarlat in a forest clearing up a tree lined drive. A small family chateau, it’s been in the same family for 800 years and is the permanent residence of the current owners! As such, it still has most of its original furnishings including the chateau ghost! You can see many of the medieval elements including towers and battlements, but it was never a fortified castle with curtain walls. This chateau still has an original stacked stone roof. That’s one of the reasons for the steeply pitched timber framing as the stone roof can weigh 500-900 kgs/m2 . Just a pretty little family chateau in a quiet private setting!
Next it was a little longer drive to the northern part of the Périgord to Chateau de Hautefort, the ‘Joy of the Perigord’. This is the opposite extreme as the Marquis de Hautefort wanted to create a chateau to rival those of the Loire and drastically modified the medieval original, retaining only the two round towers and the small drawbridge gate. He served both Louis XIII and XIV and became quite wealthy sinking all his money into the chateau. In the 20th century the unfortunately named Baron & Baroness de Bastard undertook a complete restoration of the derelict chateau. After the death of the Baron, the Baroness had only lived in the restored chateau for five years when a catastrophic fire gutted the Renaissance additions in 1968. The indomitable Baroness immediately undertook a second restoration hiring only the finest traditional craftsman. It’s reported that the two magnificent carved walnut fireplace surrounds in the Great Hall alone took 5000 man hours each to reproduce! The result is spectacular and the Baroness lived to see it finished before her death in 1999 at the age of 98.
Finally, it was on to the Chateau de Losse with strong medieval underpinnings. It has a curtain wall with battlements, the largest gatehouse in South-West France and a moat that was once filled by the Vezere river that the chateau sits on. Even the Renaissance buildings have more traditional defensive elements. After lying derelict for some years, it was taken over by a private trust, restored and opened to the public. They say the now beautiful gardens of the chateau looked more like Sleeping Beauty’s forest of impassable thorns and brambles when they started. Of particular note are the low bushes by the river pruned in a unique ‘knot’ pattern and the battlement walk through low hedges. And that’s it for the Dordogne/Périgord. From there it’s on to Lourdes and next, Spain. But, that’s for the next post.
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