The good, the bad and the not so pretty. Our house in Correze

Peter and Lesley Wilson are the proud owners of a holiday home in Segur Le Chateau, which is in the Correze, a department of the Limousin. In the first of a series of articles sharing their story, they tell us how the three of them met.

First Steps

We had been regular visitors to France for over twenty years and had often considered investing in a holiday home somewhere in that country. We both loved Normandy and Brittany and, with very easy access from the UK, we had looked at properties in both regions. However, these forays into the property market had been little more than window shopping. All that changed in the Summer of 2005.

At the end of 2001 two very good friends had bought a property in the village of Segur Le Chateau about 35 miles south of Limoges in the Correze part of Limousin. We visited them in the Summer of 2002 and enjoyed the village and the area so much that we imposed ourselves on them each summer. In August 2005 we were sitting enjoying the sunshine when a French lady dropped by and enquired as to whether our friends knew of any English people who were looking for a holiday home as she wanted to sell her cottage in the village. It transpired that she and her husband were from Brive and spent each Summer in Segur but the failing health of her husband was prompting them to sell, Curiosity got the better of us and we arranged to visit her property.

The cottage was in ‘Old Forge Lane’ and was, at first sight, disappointing. There was a lot of unruly foliage covering the front and it obviously had not seen paint for some years. Inside there were four rooms, a kitchen, a sitting room and two bedrooms. There was a shower-room/loo en suite to one of the bedrooms. Although the cottage was old there were no period features inside. French windows led out to the garden which was massively overgrown as the health of the owner had stopped any work being done for some time. There was a large cellar and loft. Gas, electricity and water were all in place and it was definitely habitable. We were just about to leave when the seller surprised us all. Opposite the cottage was another similar sized property but it was a ruin. There were two end walls and a rear wall but nothing else. We were told that there was a vaulted cellar underneath and that this plot came with the cottage.

We walked back through the village and, perhaps surprisingly, we were very positive about what we had seen. It was not a classical period property but it was the right size for two people wanting to use it as a holiday home. The garden was not too large and was hidden from street level view and it was situated in one of ‘Les Plus Beaux Villages de France’. The second plot (ruin) – well, we had no idea what to do about that.

All this happened right at the end of our time in Segur and so we returned to England with a lot to think about.

Coming Next:Buying the Cottage