The Château and some history

The Château de Bardies nestles on top of a small colline in the foothills of the Pyrenees, at five hundred metres above sea level. It can be accessed from two directions from the D625, which runs from Cazeres to the north to St-Girons to the south. The northerly approach is through a farm at Gavats, up a long incline to arrive facing the château. The southerly approach is through the charming village of Montesquieu Avantes, with its ancient, ruined château set high above the present village. A long and winding road takes you past the hamlet of Bardies, where you will see the château high above you to the right. 

All around you will see the rocky outcrops that are evidence of the limestone caves beneath. The ‘Cave des Trois-Freres’, named after the three sons of Comte Bégouën who discovered it in 1910 and not far from Bardies, is one of the most famous caves in southwest France. The cave art appears to date to approximately 13,000 BC. These caves, part of a single cave complex with the ‘Tuc d’Audoubert’ whose galleries are formed by the Volp River, are some of the most ancient in France. Their most famous artefact is the clay ‘sculpture’ from the Magdalenian period of two extraordinary bison following each other in a pre-mating scene.

History of the Château

The history of the Château de Bardies is a relatively young one by comparison! It was owned for several generations, until March 1822, by the aristocratic de Bardies family, who appear to have escaped the French Revolution unscathed. Before that time Bardies and another nearby château, Le Touron, belonged to two brothers, Louis Marc and Jean Francois de Bardies. The two brothers appear to have fallen out and Jean Francois moved to the Château de Soulan, some twenty kilometres from St Girons in the mountains.

Louis Marc disinherited his brother and when he died childless, he left his properties to his cousin. Monsieur Foix Fabas, the new owner of the Château de Bardies, sold the château in March 1822 to Monsieur Jean Baptiste Barthet [1766-1834]. It was his grandson, Joseph Barthet [1836-1895], who enlarged the château, laid out the beautiful Italianate gardens and installed the amazing citerne which you see facing the ‘front’ façade of the house.

We presume that the original château was some sort of medieval fortified dwelling. The oldest part can be seen in the windows of the downstairs back corridor, which have been dated to the 14/15C. As you arrive [nowadays to the kitchen entrance on the north side, as the house is now back to front] you will spot them to your right.

If you walk to the left round to the east side, you will see the original entrance in the middle of the 16C façade, which also accesses the existing kitchen. The small tower to the left was used to ‘service’ the primitive loo above. If you go into the tower room at the end of the upstairs back corridor [now, thankfully, a modern WC], you will see two beautifully worn ancient toilets set side by side for warmth and company!

There is a huge 18C barn on this side of the house, which we have extensive plans to renovate, though work has not yet commenced. Plans include a huge party/music room, a recording studio, a small flat downstairs and a summer kitchen, as well as an Italianate garden and pond, and a potager for summer vegetables. The existing farm consists of over fifty hectares, devoted solely to livestock and woodland.

To the right of the house as you arrive are white cast iron gates, which take you through to the 17C southerly façade. Grooms would have taken the horses as they rode in, enabling them to approach the house on foot directly from the stables. This new entrance, with its coping- stone above and grand oak staircase within would have provided a much grander entrance to the château.

The large room on the left at the top of the ‘escalier’, now the master bedroom, was previously used as the ‘salon’. The corridor between was a relatively recent, and unnecessary, addition. To the right is the ‘ante- room’, a gorgeous elegant room in the middle of the house with a large fireplace and doors at each end. The servants would have attended to their duties here via the back staircase, whilst the proprietors would have entered via the main staircase. Before we installed the new wiring, all the light switches were situated at the back of the house so that the servants could turn them on unobtrusively.

When we first viewed the house in December 1999, there was a stunning eighteenth century gilded carriage parked in the tower garage, as well as the most amazing collection of ancient saddles and tack in what is now the laundry room. By all accounts, they were great riders and hunters, and formidable swordsmen. The walls were covered with ‘epees’, prints and old photographs of ‘la chaisse’. The ancient armoires in the old ‘salle a manger’ [now the ‘salon’] were full of grand monogrammed china, cutlery and table linen designed to entertain and impress the visiting ‘chasseurs’ and their entourages.

During this period of affluence, the ‘salle a manger’ was gentrified with a new ceiling, fine oak floor and large, fitted armoires installed on either side of the fireplace to house the fine tableware. The large rooms upstairs were subdivided into smaller, more elegant bedrooms with marble fireplaces. Sadly, for practical reasons, we had to turn one of these into our bathroom, requiring the removal of the marble fireplace, and another into the principal guest bathroom.

When we bought the house the old farmhouse kitchen was completely intact. The old bread oven remains. There was an ancient ‘marmite’ hanging from a chain over the open hearth and confit pots and fruit picking baskets lined up on the seventeenth century table, which is still there. It was as if we were walking back in time to another, much simpler life. The hooks for curing charcuterie and the lovely meshed cupboards in the pantry are further reminders of the industry of previous owners.

There must have been a large number of servants in employment during the nineteenth century, as befitted men of stature like the Messieures Barthets. Indeed, we found many old servants’ uniforms stuffed away in armoires upstairs. As well as being respected local gentry, they also appear to have been actively involved in public life. Indeed, Monsieur Joseph Barthet was the Maire of the commune of Montjoie from 1881-1891.

The First World War had a devastating impact on the economy of the local area. Like the south west of England, the south west of France provided the infantry divisions, the cannon fodder.

The Barthet family was decimated. Joseph Barthet and his wife, Marie de Lesparda [1846-1934] had five children, two sons and three daughters. The eldest, Louis [1873-1948], joined up in 1914, survived all its horrors but returned wounded to his widowed mother and unmarried sister, Germaine [1879-1975] at Bardies in 1918. His brother, Etienne [1874-1916], was killed.

His two youngest sisters, Amelie [1883-1922] and Suzanne [1887-1966] married two brothers. Amelie married Captain Ambroise Henry [1877-1914] and Suzanne married Lieutenant Auguste Henry [1883-1914]. The two brothers were killed in action within three weeks of each other at the commencement of the war. They are commemorated on the war memorial to the fallen in St Girons. We are humbled by their sacrifice and will always remember their part in the history of the Château de Bardies.

In the garden, on either side of the pathway, are two splendid lime trees. The one on the left was planted in 1912 to commemorate the birth of Germaine Henry [1912-2000], the second child of Amelie and Ambroise [her brother, Louis Henry [1911-1991], had arrived the year before]. The one on the right was planted in 1913 to commemorate the birth of Simone Henry [1913-1999], the only daughter of Suzanne and Auguste. These two beautiful trees provide a salutary reminder of how quickly the world around us can change.

The history of the château in the twentieth century is very much the history of strong women. Madame Barthet and her injured son and daughters and three infant grandchildren continued as best they could, with the help of Laurent’s ancestors, the Bolzoms, to maintain the farm and its activities.

Today Laurent Bolzom, together with his wife Regine and their two young sons, lives in the house with the plum coloured shutters opposite and continues the family tradition of organising and maintaining the farm.

Germaine married George Crinon [1894-1940], professor of mathematics and the principal of the college, but the tragedy of war was to strike again. George was killed fighting for France in June 1940. She was left a widow, like her mother before her, with three young children.

The women did everything themselves and threw nothing away, repairing, restoring and renovating everything they could not afford to replace. Mains water was installed in 1960 [you can still see the old well and pump], as was electricity. Many of the lamps in the house have been converted. Their loss was our gain, for we bought with the house all the old furniture, china and linens that had survived, in some cases, many centuries of use.

The women survived the horrors of the Second World War where, in the Ariege, the Communists and the Resistance were particularly strong. This was in part due to the Ariege’s proximity to the escape routes through the Pyrenees to neutral Spain and its sea- ports. Not far from Bardies, the village of Rimont on the main St Girons/ Foix road was the scene of a Nazi reprisal on 21st August 1944 when, in response to fierce fighting by the ‘maquis’, 44 trucks full of soldiers from the eastern front arrived in Rimont. By the end of the day, 11 Rimontais had been shot, many women had been raped and 236 buildings had been set alight and destroyed. Today, as you enter the village, the epitaph ‘Rimont, Village Martyr’ chillingly reminds us of the horrors of those dark days.

Fans of ‘Secret Army’ might like to know that many evaders helped by the O’Leary network were filtered down through central France to Agen and Toulouse, then on to the central Pyrenees and the starting point of ‘Le Chemin de la Liberte’ from St Girons. In total, it is estimated that 782 evaders successfully escaped over the mountain peaks of the Ariege. The price was high. More than a hundred ‘passeurs’, the brave local men who lead the way, were betrayed, before being arrested and deported, or cold-bloodedly shot. Despite high surveillance, remarkably, the St Girons – Esterri escape route, via Mont Valier, stayed operational throughout the war.

Restoration

When Louis Henry, died in 1991, the château became ‘in division’ between the two surviving cousins. Madame Simone Henry, a teacher and intellectual, who never married, died in 1999. Madame Germaine Crinon, nee Henry, died in 2000. Sadly, the house and its lands had to be sold to pay the death duties. It was the end of an era. The family of Simone and Germaine had owned the château for 178 years. In March 2000 we became the proud owners of the Château de Bardies.

For our part, we have restored those parts of the house that were neglected. The roofs, the wiring, the plumbing and central heating were essential, as was the glorious architect designed swimming pool at the far end of the garden on the left. We ‘modernised’ the kitchen to something resembling a seventeenth century abbey kitchen [never let an architect/ historian loose on a kitchen!], we created six new bathrooms [there were only two loos and two miniscule bathrooms in the whole house!], we installed a laundry room and, best of all, we created a fabulous ‘biblioteque’, complete with 18C reclaimed French fireplace, from the old earth floored woodshed. When we bought the château the bedroom above was propped up with a tree trunk! Additionally, whilst restoring the roof, we have created an open plan ‘dortoir’ on the top floor for surplus visitors.

Sadly, in the process of such major renovation work we lost the historic nineteenth century hand printed wallpapers which decorated most of the rooms, although we were not sorry to lose the nicotine and fire stained paper in the present day ‘salle a manger’. I still have the old curtains but gradually over the past few years we have replaced these with their modern equivalents. We have tried to use everything left in the house that was serviceable, in order to give the château that essentially ‘French shabby chic style’, which is its heritage.

It is a conscious choice; we did not want a stylish, trendy interior that may have been more practical but certainly would not have been in keeping with ‘l’esprit de Bardies’. We hope that the people who visit us empathise with what we are trying to do and are not disappointed. There is everything there that one needs for modern life but it is secondary to our over-riding desire to remain as true and as faithful as we can to the history of our house. It has been a labour of love and we hope that you love the Château de Bardies as much as we do.