Sleeping BEAUTY
Although the chateau was overgrown with brambles and close to collapse, interior designer Catherine-Hélène had no qualms about the work required to bring it back to life
It’s di cult to imagine interior decorator Catherine-Hélène Frei von Au enberg, or her German husband, author Pierre Frei von Au enberg, living in a mobile home. And yet, 16 years ago, their home for two months was, in Catherine’s words ‘a very small caravan’ in the garden of their recently purchased 13th- century castle in the village of Pampelonne in southwest France. ‘Initially, Pierre said he wouldn’t be able to live in it for more than a week, despite the chandelier I had installed for him,’ says Catherine. ‘But it had to be longer, as the house was uninhabitable. Every night we went to a local farmer’s house for a shower.’
Glamorous, yet practical, Catherine enjoys getting her hands dirty on a building project. Over a long career as an interior decorator – a talent she discovered over 40 years ago when she and Pierre first met and she decided to redecorate his house in Chelsea – she has laid floors, plastered walls, and generally mucked in with the builders and artisans who work with her. ‘Pierre was older than me, well- established, and editor of a German weekly called Quick when I first knew him,’ she says. ‘ We loved London but craved the solitude and peace of the countryside.’ They found a farmhouse in Wales where Pierre could write and Catherine learned how to restore old buildings.
After 20 years in London and Wales, they decided to return to France. Back on home ground, as well as working for clients, Catherine undertook a series of house restorations for their own use, including a shepherd’s smallholding in the Pyrenees, and a townhouse on the banks of the river Tarn. Looking for more space and a garden, they viewed a property that once formed the centre of a fortified town known in this part of France as a bastide. ‘It belonged to a retired colonel who was using it as a retreat from frequent rows with his wife. He only occupied a couple of rooms,’ says Catherine. ‘There were 600 empty whisky bottles in the old coach house.’
The spiral staircase inside the tower had collapsed, the shutters were hanging o their hinges and rooms had been clumsily partitioned: ceilings lowered, clay floor tiles painted gloss red and yellow, and there was only the most rudimentary wiring and plumbing. However, Catherine promptly decided they should buy it, partly because they were both entranced by the Sleeping Beauty romance of a castle with a tower and a garden completely overgrown with brambles, partly because the price reflected its ruinous state. Not many people would have been brave enough. ‘Friends thought we were absolutely mad. They said it would be a disaster. But they changed their minds when they came back a year later.’
It took 12 months to do the essential work of clearing and demolition that allowed them to see the full potential of this building. Many original features survived, including all the chimney pieces, a beautifully simple sweep of staircase added when the building was divided to make two houses in the early 18th century, and wide floorboards as glossy as conkers
on the second floor landing. While the ground floor has a baronial feel, with its beamed ceilings and grand entrance hall, the first floor is neoclassical. The staircase runs across the back of the building, lit by windows overlooking the garden. On this floor on either side of the stairs are two bedrooms and adjoining bathrooms. Across the landing, at the front of the house, is a salon with long windows, a high ceiling, and its full complement of classical detailing, from a deep cornice, to pedimented architraves, panelled doors, and a parquet floor laid in bands of di erent hardwoods that radiate from a central star motif. It was hidden under a layer of concrete, which Catherine spent months chipping o on hands and knees.
The stripping out took a year, but it was another three years until the work was finished. As work progressed, the cantilevered staircase, declared safe by the engineer despite its disconcerting camber, was given the added support of steel pillars. The space to the right of the hall, which had been used as stabling, was converted to make a laundry room at the front, and a pretty dining room at the back where an 18th- century carved stone fireplace, bought in several pieces and restored by Catherine, contrasts with the rough, whitewashed beams. And the tower with its collapsed staircase became a larder and utility room on the ground floor where the surviving lower steps make shelving for groceries. On the two floors above, the space is used as bathrooms with walkin showers enclosed within the curving stonework.
Every room displays Catherine’s boundless creativity, ingenuity, and inventive use of materials. She laid the floor herself in the entrance hall, distressing the new stone tiles with acid and lime for a patina of age. The kitchen work surface, with the silky finish of polished marble, was made by sprinkling powdered concrete and burnishing it with an ice pack wrapped in a towel. ‘I love to experiment,’ she says. ‘You just need the confidence to try things out.’