Exploring

With a property that is so large and also so old with many alterations over the centuries there are always new places to explore and new discoveries to be made. Over the last couple of days we have been exploring a little. The first place that we checked out was the southern most of the outbuildings. It is pretty

big and on ground level it is split into 4 areas one of which we use to keep all of the garden equipment, trailer and mower in. There is also a second level to this building but I had never been up there for the simple reason that there is not a staircase. Access is through a large window but you need a long ladder, I suspect it was originally a hay store. Any way yesterday we got the longest ladder that we could find and up we went. As I reach the top of the ladder and made my way inside - wow! I was expecting it to be big but this was something else, I had just not appreciated the scale of this place. I recalled the architect saying it is bigger than you expect and he was right. A vast space with a perfect roof, the beams that support the huge roof were all in great condition. The floorboards were a bit ropey in places but the joists which can be seen from below are all extremely good. At some point this is going to be amazing accommodation.

Today we carried on the exploring but on a smaller scale. The chateau has three towers, tow round ones at the back and a square one at the front. There is an access hole into one of the round towers so again we got a ladder and up we went. Again to was amazing. I had not appreciated just how high the circular roofs of 

these towers are. It just went up and up. Also I was expecting the room up there to be quite small. In reality is was very big. The reason being is that the walls of these towers are over one metre thick. As there are not any walls in this space, only roof you gain a metre all of the way round. It must work out as an extra 20 sq metres compared to the room below!