… back home from the Maison Ducros-Maymat in the rue de la Poste without being hauled off to the local nick.

In fact it was all something of a disappointment. We didn’t need to break into this empty house because someone knew someone who knew someone else who knew someone else who knew someone who had the keys. That’s how things work here in rural France.

But to start at the very beginning, the story behind the Maison Ducros Maymat is that it’s one of these maisons de bourgeois that was built in the 1930s by one of the rich people whom, during the early 20th Century, infested Pionsat.

There are many of this type of house built in Pionsat during this period, built in the art-deco style with marble and all that kind of thing.

This one is considered to be special and for a very good reason – it has 12,000 square metres of ground that are laid out as parkland, orchards and a drive that connects the property upon which the new Intermarche supermarket was built earlier this year.

It’s been abandoned since the late 1990s and the town of Pionsat has just bought it for simply the price of the ground upon which the property sits.

The intention is, apparently, to demolish it, making a new salle de fetes, a town square, a medical centre, a new road through the back of the town, and a handful of building plots which will be sold to finance the cost of the enterprise.

Marianne’s aim was to visit the property, make a description and an inventory, measure it all up and to photograph all of the important arty bits. I was roped in for the photography bit.

And there’s no doubt that the place is magnificent and it’s a credit to its designer and builder. But it’s huge, sprawling and unwieldy, totally unmodernised and in a really poor state.

And hereby hangs a tale.

If people were to be totally honest, the only people who can really bear the responsibility for the events that have arisen must be, in my opinion, the people who have owned the building. I reckon that it’s had almost nothing spent upon it in the way or repairs, renovation and modernisation for probably 50 years and it’s this factor that has led to the lack of future for the property.

This is why I reckon that it’s been up for sale for so long and how come the town of Pionsat has been able to buy it for a pittance. This wealth of the early 20th Century is all very well, but there is not a soul in the whole of the region these days who has enough money to restore it to the days of its glory.

It makes you realise just how far these rural regions of France have fallen on hard times, and what the place must have been like in the belle epoch.

But I made an exciting discovery there.

There’s a ballroom there and we inspected it closely. And it’s been clearly designed and built by a real and proper architect who knows his job. The acoustics and sonorisation are such that it’s a totally perfect music room. It’s like being in the inside of a drum with everything vibrating in perfect pitch as you move around.

I’ve heard about places like this and so have you if you’ve read books such as those by PG Wodehouse, but this is the first time I’ve ever experienced one. It’s a shame that this is going to be demolished

In other news, I’ve now gone onto summer hours here. That means working on the computer from 10:00 until the battery goes flat, and then working on the house and garden until 19:00 instead of 18:00. Now that my web pages for the Trans-Labrador Highway are on line, I’ve started on the Newfoundland pages.

J’ai une centaine (au moins) d’images que j’ai prise en photo pendant ma visite aujourd’hui. Si vous avez envie d’en regarder, contacterez-moi via Facebook.

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