Real Life Stories Buying A Watermill In Limousin

Date Published:

18/06/2008

This magnificently restored watermill in central France is a celebrity in its own right. Set in an idyllic rural area, it's been featured on TV, as well as numerous magazine pages and websites but, for a more permanent picture, see it on a stained-glass window in the local church. So who better to tell us about it than its current owner, Trisha Mason?

Trisha discovered the mill, called 'Le Moulin des Combes', on a family holiday in the Limousin region of France in 1987. 'I wasn't looking to buy a property,' she says. 'In fact, it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.' But like many people buying abroad, the renovation bug struck. When she bought it the mill was completely overgrown and had been empty for 50 years - and electricity, running water, doors and windows were all missing.

Set in the heart of the Limousin countryside, near the village of Chateauponsac, the watermill was built 120 years ago by a rich Parisian family but over time, the family abandoned it and when Germany occupied France in the Second World War it became a hub of local Resistance activity.

'We found several objects hidden under the floorboards,' says Trisha. 'When we took them along to the museum, they were identified as standard kit for English paratroopers.' The mill was abandoned again after the war and remained a ruin until Trisha came along - who then spent 15 years doing it up.

All the renovation work was done on a tight budget, with Trisha calling on different generations of her family to help out. Her father, who was in his 80s, worked alongside a builder, and Trisha’s daughter (who was 14 at the time) got electricity going in the house - a job she completed with the support of a library book. As family and friends joined in, the work became fun. Each school holiday Trisha would go down to France and do a bit more. 'We used to work all morning and then we'd have lunch, knock off and go to the lakes for a swim,' she says. 'Then, in the evening, we'd have dinner together and be up early next morning to start work again.'

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