A Sad Ruin

When we were house hunting, back in 2006, we looked at a former boulangerie in rue Chaumont-Patin in Preuilly sur Claise. We thought seriously about buying it and it had many attractive features. But it was also a bit of a rabbit warren with many levels and eccentricities, and in the end we rejected it on the grounds it was really too big for us and there was too much work to do on it to restore it. We dodged a bullet, because as we now know, rue Chaumont-Patin is subjected to an endless stream of heavy vehicles taking a shortcut between two autoroutes.

The old boulangerie photographed on 3 November.

Nowadays the old boulangerie Gillard as it is known is in a sorry state. It has lost its roof, and that always leads to a very rapid deterioration in a building. It is now virtually a ruin, and a dangerous one at that. There is a distinct risk of the building collapsing into the busy main road it is located on.

From another angle on 3 November.

The mayor is understandably worried. Some urgent work has been done to stabilise the building, at the municipality's expense, but they are not the owner of the property. The municipality is nevertheless acting in lieu of the owner, as the owner has proved unable to fund the repairs, after repeated orders to do so.

 What the building looked like the day we first saw it in 2006.

At this point in the proceedings the municipality has not decided whether to demolish the building or rebuild it. Hopefully whatever they do they'll be able to get a grant to help cover the costs. The money might come from a project called 'Petites Villes de demain' ('Small Towns of tomorrow'). Whatever happens it is currently a cause for concern as any collapse of the building into the road will cause major disruption to traffic.

Here is what we wrote about the old boulangerie when we first saw it: 

The place we had travelled to see was an old boulangerie in Preuilly-sur-Claise. Right on the edge of the village on the main road, it was almost the first building we saw. An amazing place with many features, including the garden which had been converted into a room of over 110 square metres. That room is almost as big as the house I grew up in, which is a staggering thought. It also had a communal staircase (a stone spiral staircase possibly 500 years old) and a cellar over 1000 years old. The rooms were all higgledy piggledy, and appeared to have grown where they landed. So tempting, but at the same time a real challenge as far as what to do with all that space! It also had no garden except for about 10 metres of shared courtyard. Needless to say we were sorely tempted.