It's a couple of years now since I first decided that we really needed to do something about our outside dining area at the mill. After all we spend most of our lives out there from April through to October. (Not just eating and drinking you understand!) We'd been so busy renovating the inside of … Continue reading From factory floor to lush garden oasis – the terrace challenge
< Back to 'History' In my previous post I talked about the difficult period around the French Revolution, the things that were happening around the Moulin de la Roche at the time and how they might have impacted the miller, René Monsimier and his family. The story continues with the miller who took over Moulin … Continue reading René Plassais: miller 1805 – 1820
< Back to 'History' It's not just who lived in your house before you that's fascinating. It is also what was happening around them during their lives. This is especially true for the millers at le Moulin de la Roche in the 1700s as, out of all the turbulent times that France has seen in … Continue reading René Monsimier: miller from 1770 ish – 1805
OK, so it's nothing as grand as a library, but it's where we keep our books. Once our landing had designed itself, and what we needed from this space became clear, we set about creating a cosy, warm reading and music corner with plenty of storage for books and all sorts of other paraphenalia like … Continue reading The ‘library’
All the houses I have ever lived in have had stairs, and at the top of those stairs was a landing. (Actually, all except one, where the stairs just ended up at the door of the only bedroom). Every landing has posed a similar DIY challenge - how to make the most of a tiny … Continue reading The landing that designed itself
< Read other snippets of the mill's history An old postcard from the early 1900s shows le Moulin de la Roche with a couple standing outside, presumably the miller and his wife. The census records available on the departmental archives’ website show that in 1906 the meunier, miller at le Moulin de la Roche was … Continue reading The Joubert family – 1902-1918 (updated)
The dappled light through the poplar trees plays on the rippling water, as the bright turquoise flash of a kingfisher startles a heron who lifts himself gracefully into the air and glides off along the river with long beats of his elegant wings... Yes, it is that peaceful most of the time but sometimes being … Continue reading Oh, the romance of an old water mill – not!
Google is your friend During the confinement, at the start of my search (and not really knowing what I was looking for!), I got a bit bored and started googling the name of the mill/ the river we’re on/ the name of the village in various permutations. Once I had got through several pages of … Continue reading Tracing the history of our French home – Part 5
Local historians, past and present You’ll have seen from my last post, Thank you Abbé Toublet, that one particular local historian has helped me to trace our mill back a thousand years. Yes, you read that right – A THOUSAND YEARS! Read about it here There’s no doubt about it. Local historians, past and present, … Continue reading Tracing the History of our French home – Part 4
So it probably won’t come as a surprise when I say that some of the most useful resources I found for finding out about the history of our French water mill were local historians. One of our first visitors when we moved into the mill was a local historian eager to find out how much … Continue reading Thank you, Abbé Toublet.
