Chateau Grand Design
Five storeys, seven bedrooms – and yours for less than a Home Counties semi
WHEN Doug Ibbs and Deni Daniel appeared on Grand Designs back in 2004 after buying an enormous ruin in rural France, a sceptical Kevin McCloud proclaimed they’d got ‘carried away with the romance of it all’ – and wasn’t at all sure they’d ‘thought it through’.
The couple, both divorcees who had met five years previously, bought the tumble-down 19th Century manor house on a whim after stumbling across an advert for it online.
The odds didn’t look good – neither of them spoke French, they had no experience with building work and they hadn’t even been intending to move overseas when they bought the house just two days after spotting it. They sold their Dorset home and gave up steady jobs in Britain (Doug was an engineer and Deni worked in sales and marketing.)
The five-storey property in the department of Creuse in the Limousin region in central France had been the headquarters of the local Resistance movement during the war. It was discovered and burnt down by the Germans in 1944, and since then it had not been touched.
But just a few months after first seeing the property, Kevin was forced to eat his words. ‘Every time I’ve visited I’ve been more and more blown away by Doug and Deni,’ he said on the show. ‘They’ve proved that through sheer dogged optimism, it’s possible to tackle almost anything.’
Fourteen months after buying the manor house, the couple, who lived in a caravan in the garden while the work was being done, opened their doors to paying guests.
Now, ten years after the show aired on Channel 4, they have put the property on the market for €599,960 – about £495,000. Both 64, they are keen to retire and spend more time with their children and grandchildren (they have five children and four grandchildren between them.) Their pensions won’t allow them to maintain a large property like Chez Jallot, which comes with four acres of land, without keeping it running as a business.
‘It breaks our hearts to have to sell and we’re doing so with a lot of regret,’ says Doug. ‘But it’s an experience we can look back on and say, wow, we did that.’
Something about the intrepid pair must have struck a chord with Grand Designs viewers. Since Chez Jallot opened its doors in Novem- ber 2004, they have been inundated with bookings from viewers charmed by the couple’s French dream. Some guests have been from as far as Australia, where the show aired a couple of years after it did in Britain.
‘In the first few years all our guests were viewers of the show,’ says Deni. ‘We haven’t had to spend any money on marketing at all. Now we get a lot of word-of-mouth bookings and return visitors and people who’ve read the reviews online.’
Doug adds: ‘We’ve met people from every continent in the world. The international gatherings around our dining tables in the evenings have been really great.’
He says the couple often have house-hunters staying with them – perhaps hoping they’ll be able to pick up some advice.
The Limousin region has about 10,000 British residents and attractions include Lake Vassivière, France’s largest man-made lake (a 15-minute drive from Chez Jallot).
Since the show, the couple have carried on building. When they started having guests, only the first two storeys were habitable. They completed the rest of the house, which now has seven en suite bedrooms, in 2006. In 2009 they converted the derelict barn into two self-catering gites.
Doug and Deni bought Chez Jallot for £36,000 in 2003 and although they originally earmarked about £100,000 for doing it up, like most Grand Designers they far exceeded their budget. ‘The total must be about half a million euros,’ admits Deni.
The couple aren’t selling Chez Jallot as a business as they would have to pay capital gains tax, although they are happy to offer advice to buyers who want to run a similar concern. They plan to stay in the area and buy or even build something smaller.
According to Paul Haskett of Legget estate agents, who are selling the property, now is a tricky time to be selling as the market is depressed in France. Prices in the Limousin dropped by almost 16 per cent last year, compared to three to four per cent in the rest of France, and many homeowners are in negative equity. ‘Prices are set to drop further this year. So it’s definitely a buyers’ market,’ says Paul.