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En Bosc
The stone farmhouse at En Bosc in late afternoon light, olive trees in the foreground and open farmland beyond

Gers · Occitanie · Southwest France

A stone farmhouse in Gascony, and the whole hill to yourselves

Sleeps 12. Private pool, private forest, and 360° of sunflower and wheat in every direction.

Built
1776
Beds
9
Aspect
South
Lat.
43.9° N
Guests
12
Bedrooms
6
Beds
9
Baths
4.5

What it’s for

Built for everyone arriving at once

Most people who come here come as a group: one big family reunion, or three or four families taking the house together. That is what it is good at. There is room for everybody to be in the same place without being on top of each other, and there is nobody else for a long way in any direction.

  • The covered terrace with a long table, looking out over lavender and wheat fields

    The adults

    On the terrace with a drink, watching the sun go down over the wheat.

  • The pool in front of the house on a bright day, loungers along the lawn

    The small ones

    In the pool all afternoon, until somebody makes them come out.

  • A large cedar on the property with a bench beneath it

    The older ones

    Gone into the private forest and not seen again until dinner.

The covered terrace running along the south side of the house
The terrace
The farmhouse at dusk beneath a pink sky, its pigeonnier tower at one end
The house
A field of sunflowers in full bloom beside the house
The fields

Inside

Stone walls, open trusses, and a table long enough for all of you

En Bosc is a long, low Gascon farmhouse under a terracotta pantile roof. Inside it is bare stone and timber: open trusses over the living room, a mezzanine above it, deep fireplaces, terracotta floors, and a covered loggia along the south side deep enough to eat under all summer.

It is furnished throughout in handmade Balinese mahogany, brought from the Asian side of the family’s own story. Dark carved wood against pale limestone is the one thing about the house nobody expects.

6 bedrooms and 9 beds sleep 12, in a mix of doubles, twins and a four-poster. Water comes from the property’s own well and is good to drink straight from the kitchen tap.

En Bosc is Occitan for “in the wood”.

Built
1776

250 years old this year

Sleeps
12
Bedrooms
6
Bathrooms
4.5
Pool
Private

Unheated, and it does not need to be

Water
Own well

Good from the kitchen tap

Aspect
South

The loggia is shaded from noon

The living room under open timber trusses with a mezzanine above
The living room, under the trusses
The dining room with a long table laid for a meal beside a stone fireplace
One table, everybody at it
The kitchen with a range cooker, stone walls and terracotta floor
The kitchen
A bedroom with a carved four-poster bed against a stone wall
One of six bedrooms
The house from the air at sunset, its land running away in every direction

The land

360° from the top of the hill, and all of it yours

The house sits on a hill with its own land around it: sunflower and wheat to the horizon, and a private forest for the children to disappear into. No overlooked terrace, no neighbouring gîte, no passing traffic.

Guests playing pétanque on the court beside the house
Pétanque court
Two guests playing table tennis under the covered terrace
Table tennis
A wooden picnic table in the shade of a willow at the edge of a field
The picnic table, under the willow

Heritage

Why this house exists

Hans and Pascale first came to this part of Gascony in the 1980s and kept coming back, until it stopped being somewhere they visited. They spent years looking for the right house. En Bosc was built in 1776 and was close to derelict when they found it.

It took them from 2001 to 2010 to bring it back, restoring what was there rather than replacing it and adding something of their own from Asia, which is why 250-year-old Gascon limestone is furnished in handmade Balinese mahogany. Nine years is long enough that the work became a habit. Children and grandchildren came out each holiday and were handed a spade.

Read the whole story →
250

years standing this year. Nine of them were spent putting it back together.

Three generations of the family planting a tree in front of the house during the renovation, Easter 2004
Easter 2004, mid-renovation. Three generations, one tree.
Hans and Pascale, sitting out in the field below the house at sunset
Hans and Pascale, below the house.

The area

The Gers, which the French keep quiet about

Ten minutes gets you to Saint Clar and its Thursday market — a bastide founded in the 1270s by a contract between the bishop of Lectoure and Edward I of England. Fifteen, in almost any direction, gets you a hilltop village, an old church and a view worth stopping the car for. This is Armagnac country: markets that still matter, and some of the best eating in France with almost none of the crowds.

Everything there is to do →
Trees backlit by low sun across a field at dawn, mist in the hollows
  • Saint Clar10 min

    Market town. Everything practical

  • Lachapelle19 min

    Fortified village, extraordinary church

  • Lectoure30 min

    Hilltop town, thermal baths

  • Auch45 min

    Capital of the Gers. The cathedral

The blue hour

The house is at its best when the light goes

The pool at dusk with lanterns lit along the gravel and the last colour in the sky
A storm cell building over the fields beyond the pool
Family sitting together by the pool in the evening
The living room fireplace with deep armchairs drawn up to it
The stone facade of the house with roses climbing it