Chateau de Bourneau: Gothic Days

Dressed to impress? Erin Choa is definitely not playing the damsel in distress from a Gothic novel…

There are days when IT feel as if I am living inside a Gothic novel or a mysterious fairytale at Château de Bourneau. Crisp, spring sunshine has already awoken the bulbs and scattered flecks of gold primroses across the lawns, making us think that summer is just around the corner. Yet sometimes (and entirely without warning) we open the shutters to find we are blinded by morning mists, rising off the medieval moat.

It is as if we are within our own private cloud that enrobes the castle in the soft embrace of a fairytale. The mists sweep out from the moat across the rolling park, blunting the edges of the landscape into airy oblivion and stealing the colour from the vista as if we are inside an 18th-century French grisaille painting, inked with a limited palette of grey and muted greens. We can no longer see the ruined orangery from the turret window, cloaked in its gauzy morning dress.

The eerie stillness is always broken by the deer that sleep in our woods entering stage left.

We catch their leap across the fields, silhouetted against a low sun trying to break through the mist as they weave around the stark figures of our old trees. It doesn’t feel real and it is as if the château is part of a stage set or time has been paused and we could be in another century, peering out upon this grisaille with its slowly growing blush of a rising sun.

I always find these surprising days incredibly beautiful and with the perfect hint of Gothic mystery. However, this châtelaine is not in a white lace floaty dress, tearing through marble hallways with flowing hair and a guttering candelabra, hiding from the ghosts. I wear many guises here but ‘damsel in distress’ is not one of them. I’m in my practical builder’s onesie, warming my hands on a strong cup of tea before braving the chill morning air to clear gutters, toss the compost or weed the rose beds.

I then change into my apron to cook lunch beside a cosy kitchen fire, treating ourselves to local cheeses and fresh French baguette. Next, I roll up my sleeves to hit the laundry from our holiday cottages, lugging back sacks of bedding and towels to be sorted. In the afternoon, I might have a meeting with wedding clients so I change again into something smarter before getting back into the overalls to finish plastering and painting one of our ongoing renovation projects inside the château.

This century, us châtelains have to be practical and hands- on, as well as self-sufficient in most broad estate management skills: the teams of servants, who once ran these estates, have faded into the mists of time. This Gothic novel has a modern twist, one where the heroine isn’t fainting into the arms of a gentleman galloping over the hills to save her. This Gothic novel begins with the heroine handing the handsome French duke a paintbrush and roller to crack on with her turreted bedroom renovation!!

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London-born hospital doctor Erin Choa is the 6th châtelaine of Château de Bourneau, where she lives with her French fiancé Jean-Baptiste and bossy cat HRH Oscar. Read her regular column in French Property News magazine and follow her as she blogs about their château-life on Instagram @theintrepidchatelaine