THE FIRST CORNER (Brittany)

(The first corner of France where we bought property)
Looking back at my posts I see entries on poor old 'Toad Hall' are few and far between. It is our second property to be purchased in France way back in the mid 90's. Firstly why 'Toad Hall'? Well our first house was named 'La Souris' (the mouse) because when we got the keys for it and arrived at the house we found that the bath had become an unfortunate death chamber for a couple of mice - don't ask what way my mind works that makes such an occurrence give a name to a house. When we bought this cottage I can't remember what names may have been on the shortlist but sometime during an early visit a toad came to an unfortunate end in a fatal accident involving my husband and the front door and so continuing the theme 'Toad Hall' came about (Maison du Crapaud doesn't quite have the same ring to it)

The dangerous front door.

Due to buying the house a while ago I don't have a lot of photos on the computer, it was the old steam powered camera back then. But here's a 'before' of the kitchen/dining room. This was the only habitable room, the 2 old ladies had lived and slept there and had no sanitation, they also had a roof with a dirty great hole in it. So the house was going to wrack and ruin when we bought it for £10,000. Only our neighbours Monsieur et Madame Robert had shown any interest in buying it and if they had it would now be a ruin as they just wanted it for the strip of grass between our properties. Right need to find some more photos....