Château de la Ferrière: The 18th-century château with a personal touch

It was a case of love at first sight for the owners of the Château de la Ferrière B&B in Vaux-sur-Aure, Normandy. “Pietro, who is Italian, fell in love with the Château one weekend in 2013,” explains Geoffroy de Ville d’Avray, talking about his business partner and co-owner of the Château Pietro Chiapponi. “We just decided to acquire it on the spot. The idea was to restore it and make it feel like a family home so that’s what we’ve done.”

It is not hard to understand why Pietro fell in love with the Château. Built in the 18th century, the beautiful house, just ten minutes’ drive from the historic town of Bayeux, with its world-famous Tapestry, and half an hour from the city of Caen and the Normandy Landings beaches, has an appealingly informal air and some 34 acres of tranquil parkland.

Pietro and Geoffroy, however, had a task on their hands to restore the house to its former glory. The Château was in quite a dilapidated state, and they took great pains with their renovations, lovingly restoring the facades and porches, refurbishing the bedrooms and installing en-suite bathrooms as well as meticulously replacing some 200 missing period tiles.

The pair also redesigned the garden, planting thousands of shrubs, perennial plants and roses and constructing an ornamental pond filled with koi carp in front of the terrace.

In addition, Pietro and Geoffroy refurbished the three-acre American Garden which was planted in 2008 as a tribute to the American and Canadian soldiers who landed just three kilometres away from the Château on D-Day, 6 June 1944.

The Château de la Ferrière now has five expansive and stylishly decorated bedrooms, each named after a different colour.

Attention to detail is key for the owners, and alongside original period features including parquet flooring and vast casement windows overlooking the grounds, there are also extra touches of luxury, such as Hermès toiletries in the bathrooms.

The drawing room, meanwhile, has exceptional views over the unspoiled Normandy landscape and is filled with furniture inherited from the owners’ families as well as treasures found in Italian or French flea markets.
Breakfast is served in the Château’s spacious library with the emphasis on quality, local ingredients including organic eggs, fresh croissants and baguettes, homemade jams from a nearby farm and artisan Normandy cheeses.

History

The Château was originally built in 1735 for one of Louis XV’s squires, and between 1760 and 1789, the celebrated botanist Moisson de Vaux created an exotic garden full of rare plants gathered from all over the world. De Vaux had introduced magnolia to France and plantanus to Normandy, and many of the trees he planted can still be seen in the Château’s extensive parklands today.

In 1870, the Château was bought by Baron Issaverdens, the French representative of Khédive Ismael Pacha, King of Egypt, who was charged with the bizarre job of smuggling the Egyptian king into Paris incognito.
In the 20th century, the Château de la Ferrière was occupied first by German troops during World War II and later by a group of Benedictine Sisters whose convent in Caen had been destroyed by bombing. The nuns stayed in the Château until 1958, using part of the building as a chocolate factory.

Since buying the Château in 2013, de Ville d’Avray and Pietro have been providing a warm welcome to the many guests who visit from all over the world.

Home from Home

“At the château, we receive our guests as friends,” explains Geoffroy. “We welcome them every evening with an aperitif to talk about the region, to talk about their own lives and to tell them about the house. We tell them about the history of the Louis XV and Louis XVI antiques and the work we’ve done restoring things here. We want to make them feel as comfortable as possible and to feel involved and part of the Château.”

Geoffroy sums up the appeal of the Château de la Ferrière. “We are the antithesis of a traditional and impersonal hotel. Our Château is a family home, with just five individually decorated rooms. This was once an aristocrat’s home, but it has also had a varied and fascinating history. We think it has a very special atmosphere, and we want our guests to feel part of that.”

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