23/12/2016
LE FRESNAY IS A SPECIAL PLACE AND THIS IS WHY...
It started with a story. A small child and an old man.
“Tell me again Gramp” and again and again; the story of a pink granite farmhouse in the hollow of the land, the smell of onions and cows and a pretty young lady called Irene. A young dispatch rider, missing in action he had been sheltered, at great risk and fell in love. The girl knew evry detail of the buildings, she pictured the kitchen with its range, the pewter jugs and brass candlesticks. Heard many times the story never changed but the importance sank into both their hearts.
Then came Le Fresnay a pink granite farm, further south, stronger built, but the girl remembered the stories and saw the future. The farmhouse finished, but the old barn had been the original house; there was the hearth and the chimney space, the low walls of the first thatch, it all fitted.
So began our renovation of Fresnay Grange and every step was one of history. All the work, my husband , son & family did respecting the builders of 300 years ago and all the detail echoing the story and honouring the stewardship. The mantle had those candles & jugs straight from the vide grenier, the stairs built from local oak and the hearth stones lifted & re-laid to proudly hold a cooker again. There is a spirit to our house, we call him Pierre and imagine him to be an old French farmer, clad in waxed sacking out in all weathers, a hard life or toil & pride. There’s no real ghost it’s the spirit of the very stones, the privilege of rediscovering, reinhabiting & those stories from long ago.
And it’s a homage to the story of that old man, who never forgot that French family and many years on named his daughter, Irene, after the girl he had met. That daughter named me, an old French name Pauline, she too remembered the stories.
I can no longer ask my Grandfather to tell me the stories, but as I look across the farmyard history lives in those stories of a pink granite farmhouse, and I smile
