Foreign Affairs

Reportage 13595383 | © living4media / Narratives / Sanderson, Robert | 35 images

Rupert Taylor and Dagmar Busaidy used their extensive travels as inspiration for their unique, turreted French chateau. The Manoir is a small chateau in the Lot et Garonne, near Bergerac, France, and dates back to the late 15th century.One of their earlier homes was a holiday house high up in the Alpes de Haute Provence, France, where they spent family holidays between 1990 and 2004. More recently, when living in The Hague, Holland, and anticipating an early retirement, they started to look for a home in the Provence area. After a few exploratory visits, they decided to try looking further West in the Bordeaux-Bergerac area: 'On our first foray to this region, we fell in love with this 15th century chateau, ' says Dagmar.'The property was large enough to accommodate our family as well as the furniture from our previous house, in Jakarta, but more importantly it had a beautiful, calming atmosphere, ' she says.'There's a great layout, and luckily the interior wasn't overly renovated – it still retained many of its original features and charm, including high ceilings, original flooring, early built-in wardrobes original decorative cast-iron radiators, etc, and lots of natural light that floods in from the 10ft tall south-facing windows.'