Several years ago I lived in the French countryside near the dainty town of Montrichard, itself a small burg 30 minutes south of the mid-sized city of Tours. Although the area is afflicted by subdivisions as swiftly and shoddily built as anywhere else, plenty of the local vernacular architecture survives.
The house I lived in dated from the eighteenth century, and had stone walls a full foot thick. Likewise the house in the picture, which was some twenty metres further down the Route de Serrelles. Those walls, incidentally, provided more than adequate protection against German artillery during the Franco-Prussian war.
A cursory glance at the roof of the second building in the picture will demonstrate that this watercolour was never finished. I was summoned, I think, by a gin and tonic. I don't suppose I'll ever return to complete it.
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