As this is going to be the first of many pages about the new house in France, I am going to call it Presbytery 1.

I was there again last week, this time with my friend Clive Nunn who is working out the design of the conversion for me. We spent the whole of Saturday in the house, he measuring a house which never heard of a right angle or indeed a straight line.
As a typical and I am fairly sure very early, house built into the circle of the Village Circulade the back of the house is much wider than the front, the house is therefore pretty much wedged shaped.
The more we studied the house the more it began to yield up it’s secrets.
It has obviously been there quite some time and has had various incarnations.
The advent of its being a presbytery is comparatively recent.
This I know for two reasons.
We got an excellent “Guide De Visite” for Thezan in the tourist office. In this they tell us that no 2 on Rue Rene Lentheric was the original Presbytery until 1914 when it was turned into a Girls School. It must have been at this time that the Priest moved his goods and chattels down the street to no 14 (Chez Dwyer) which had been a Maison de Vigneron, or winemakers house.
Our friend Petra Carter who lives nearby had recognised the house as this from the bootscrapers outside the front door, these would not have been needed for the clergy!

This is the church, a truly ancient building which goes
back at least to the 12th century, photographed from
a bedroom window. It’s bells can be heard all day, one
can only hope not all night too.

This is the view to the south out the other side of the
house.The long plain of the Orb Valley all the way down
to the Pyrenees.
It is amazing to live right in the centre of a village and
still have such a view.

This is a corridor of the attic, all plainly converted for the
maids or nuns who attended the priests.

In the unconverted half of the attic we found this strange box.
It must have been designed to carry something like a crucifix.
Possibly something to do with the processions which happened
in the past.

Also in the attic, on a broken piece of Terrazzo, possibly part
of a washstand, I found this piece of newspaper stuck on the back.
This is a detail.It is about the Prince; Le Duc d’Orleans and his
travels to London.
The question of course is which Duc d’Orleans .
I’m working on it.