Anyone with a passion for period properties knows that the perfectly proportioned drawing room and the sweeping staircase may instantly impress, but the real thrill lies in acquiring a precious piece of the past.
The rich accretions of history leave their mark on bricks and mortar but there’s also an ineffable atmosphere that defines a place and lends it a character that is all its own. Le Preverger, in the medieval French village of La Garde-Freinet, a magnificently landscaped estate nestled in a tranquil valley among the hills above St Tropez, is just such a gem, a corner of Provence that is forever Laura Ashley.
Imagine the chink of ice in a glass of pastis, the clatter of rotors from the helipad, the excited chatter of the beau monde newly arrived for lunch with the quintessentially British designer, whose name became a byword for English country living – despite the fact she was proudly Welsh.
Diana, Princess of Wales was flown in for drinks on the terrace; Margaret Thatcher dined here, too. The American designer Halston became a regular visitor and all enjoyed Ashley’s signature hospitality; simplicity, beautifully – graciously – presented.
This estate, virtually the size of a small hamlet in scale and scope, was the last property Ashley and her husband bought before she died, in 1985, aged 60, when she fell down a flight of stairs while staying at her daughter Jane’s house in the Cotswolds and suffered a brain haemorrhage.
“My mother’s love affair with Provence reached back to 1949, when she came here on her honeymoon on the back of my father’s motorbike,” remembers Ashley’s son, Nick, 53, who runs a British fashion business, and is due to open a shop, Ashley Stores, in Notting Hill, London next year.
“They were both captivated by the glamour and the wealth but ran out of money and had to sell the motorbike and limp home early. They vowed to work like hell, become successful and buy the most incredible home in St Tropez. La Garde-Freinet is the realisation of that dream.”
While her clubbable husband, Sir Bernard (he was knighted in 1987), revelled in the high life, piloting his own aircraft and entertaining smart friends on his yacht, Ashley was more at home with pared-down shabby chic: no more than 10 items of clothing in her wardrobe, starched napery and the best china at breakfast, antique silver egg holders – and a knitted cosy on the teapot.
“My mother was a down-to-earth woman who was raised in a two-up, two-down in south Wales. Airs and graces were never her thing,” Nick says.
“Although Laura Ashley the brand was all about chintz and flounce, Laura Ashley the woman had more low-key, almost spartan taste. There were surprisingly few soft furnishings, although what curtains, throws and cushions there were, were changed with bewildering speed, as my mother used to experiment here with new designs and prototypes.”
A test bed to some extent, but above all else, this was the house where the doyenne of bucolic interiors intended to settle and enjoy the sight of her grandchildren splashing in the pool and running free in the grounds.
The Ashleys bought the house in 1983 from actress Jeanne Moreau, who entertained the likes of Orson Welles in the glorious double-height salon, with its floor-to-ceiling windows.
“La Garde-Freinet isn’t a grand chateau, there’s no glass or marble or embellishments for the benefit of the jet set, it’s a plain house where my mother intended to live – not exactly The Good Life, maybe The Very Good Life.”
Whether the rest of us would consider 18 bedrooms, eight reception rooms and 11 bathrooms to be “plain” is a matter of opinion, but it’s true that the appeal of the pre-Napoleonic farmhouse – with assorted add-ons built onto it over the years – lies as much in its rural setting as its pleasingly modest architecture.
Located just 13 miles from the glitzy bustle of St Tropez – and a mere five minutes from the beach as the Augusta helicopter flies – the estate is slightly reminiscent in feel of Marie Antoinette’s Petit Hameau, the mock farm she had constructed in the grounds of Versailles, where she could prettily play at being a shepherdess.
Not that Ashley was a dilettante; she never did things by halves, witness the phenomenal growth of the couple’s business from cottage industry in the early Fifties – when she and Bernard designed and printed headscarves at home, then sold them to John Lewis – to an international business empire.
The nation joyfully embraced the gentle Victorian femininity of the Laura Ashley look, from napkins and tea towels to curtains and clothing. By the end of the Seventies, the business had expanded into the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan, ringing up an annual turnover of £25 million.
But after Ashley’s death, the company was beset by management and infrastructure difficulties and by 2001, the Ashley family no longer had any involvement in the company, although it continues to trade under their mother’s name.
During their Seventies and Eighties heyday, Ashley and her husband acquired all the trappings of wealth; homes in London and Brussels, Maidenhead and Wales, a villa in the Bahamas and a chateau in Picardy – but although she lived here for just 18 months, it was La Garde-Freinet that captured her heart.
“This isn’t a house, it’s a kingdom where you can grow your own vegetables and fruit, collect wild mushrooms from the woods, press your own olive oil from the olive groves and make your own wine from the vines. My mother kept chickens and the intention was to import some Welsh sheep to 'mow’ the lawns and to eat,” adds her son, Nick.
Ashley had a great affection for France; she apparently worked for British Intelligence in Paris during the Occupation, although never spoke to her family about it. (Sir Bernard held a commission in the Royal Fusiliers from 1944 to 1946 and was seconded to the Gurkha Rifles from 1944-45.)
The estate comprises 138 acres and includes a guest house, a caretaker’s house, swimming pool, pool house and landscaped gardens and is on the market for a sizeable €9.9 million (£8.9m). But its pastoral purlieu is what really sells it.
Neighbours already in the region include Johnny Depp, the Redgraves and Liam Neeson, and the area is popular with German, Dutch and Italian buyers as well as the British.
In the house itself, Ashley’s study is a rather ascetic little room set to one side, more monk’s cell than vibrant crucible of colour and pattern. For those in search of personal memorabilia, the furniture and fittings are being sold separately, by Christie’s, at a later date.
After Ashley’s death, Sir Bernard continued to live here, eccentrically filling the house with his model planes and boats. He devoted an artists’ workshop on the estate to his miniature train set; when a supporting medieval buttress got in the way of his route, he blasted a hole in it. He died in 2009, aged 82.
His second wife – he married a Belgian photographer, Regine Burnell in 1990 – now lives in Portugal and although the estate was a place of happy holiday memories for the Ashley children and grandchildren – albeit tinged with sadness that the family’s grandmère was absent – there is now a feeling that the time has come to let go.
“My mother’s four children and 10 grandchildren are all based in the UK and the US and although it’s a wonderful place, just using it as a holiday home would be to do La Garde-Freinet a disservice. It needs more attention and input than we can give it,” Nick says.
But how would Ashley herself feel about new owners taking over her dream house and making it their own? There may be 11 bathrooms, but there’s only one shower, a reflection of a very different era. The original kitchen also cries out for (sensitive) modernisation. Change elsewhere is, similarly, inevitable.
“My mother would be pleased,” Nick responds. “She was of the school of thought that nobody ever owns a house. We are just curators of it for a certain length of time.
“She would see it as only right and natural that La Garde-Freinet would pass into new hands, be lived in, loved and then handed on again,” he says.
Le Preverger at La Garde-Freinet, near St Tropez, is on the market with Knight Frank for £8.9m, (020 7629 8171; www.knightfrank.com)
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