We recently met some other ex-patriots in Thezan , Hakan and Gunilla Lundberg who are from Goteborg in Sweden, Hakan is a town planner with a keen interest in old buildings.
They visited our house in Thezan just before Christmas and while we were showing them around Hakan was much taken by one of the cupboards where we keep some of my glass collection.
Why, he wanted to know was it such an unusual shape ?

It is set in the wall totally off-set at an oblique angle.

We were able to tell him that when the builder was renovating the building for us he had come across the strange doorway at the back of the larders in the old kitchen.
It must have been hidden from view for hundreds of years.

We were delighted with it quirky shape and decided that it would make a wonderful cupboard for glass in-set in the wall.
Clive Nunn designed the shelves and got them made with much difficulty.

Hakan was immediatly fascinated, the oblique angle of the doorway was, he explained, very unusual and proved that the building was extremely early.
It was not understood why they were so shaped but thought that it might have a significance in either defence or even as a sign of welcome.
He said that he had come across examples of these in the nearby town of Pezenas on buildings thought to be extremely early.

We were delighted, further proof of the great age of the house in which we had already found vestiges of the original town walls (possibly 12th century.)

We then realised that the door to our cellar had the same oblique shape.

This morning we found this (rather more elaborate) example of an early off-set doorway in Pezenas just by the entrance to the old Jewish Ghetto.

Amazing to think that our rather simpler examples might be of a similar age.