History of the Clair Mont estate

Heritage, memory and renovation

Since 2019, we have been welcoming you to our home, nestling in the Cher valley.

We wanted to make the most of this outbuilding, which is now our gîte, so that we could welcome our family, friends and visiting guests in a friendly atmosphere while respecting their independence.

This former wine estate has retained all its charm: next to the gîte, you can see the original troglodyte dwelling and the deep cellar, dug into the rock over 250 years ago. The wine press is still in place.

It is said that dwellings keep the memory of their successive inhabitants, and we believe it because we have felt it. These places hold a little of the soul of each individual who was born here, sometimes died here, started a family here, often worked hard, laughed, cried, and all these feelings are imprinted in the stones.

We renovated it with enthusiasm, with our own hands and with the help of professional, skilled local craftsmen. We tried to preserve its rural and industrious identity.

We renamed it ‘Domaine du Clair Mont’, a little pompously, although perched on the hillside of the Cher valley, the name is justified.

To be honest, the name was intended as a play on words relating to the locality where it is situated, called ‘Ferrand’: Le Clair Mont, Ferrand…

Olga et Michel

Troglodyte house

Originally (before 1806) plot no. 159 of the Napoleonic cadastre was fallow land, and small plot no. 160 bears witness to the existence of the troglodyte dwelling.

It was probably occupied by (very) modest day labourers working for farmers or winegrowers.

We don’t know its date of origin, but it was certainly built before 1800, and perhaps even earlier…

The following photo, taken around 1932, shows it as it was then, when it was used as a kitchen and bakehouse. In fact, it has a very beautiful and voluminous bread oven.

What was the function of the vacation rental at the time ?

Charles RENARD, through his first job as a village warden in Pontlevoy, then as a hawker, had probably invested in this modest ‘house’ in anticipation of his retirement (retirement, as we know it today, did not exist, so it was necessary to have some property to rent in order to become a ‘rentier’ and be able to stop working).

He had the first ‘permanent’ house built in 1837, which is today’s gîte. The surface area shown on the land register (21 m²) is less than the actual figure (around 50 m²), because part of the building was a stable.

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