Lauzerte, Midi-Pyrénées 82110

A 19th-century farmhouse of white stone with a swimming pool, outbuildings and vast grounds, 15 minutes from the town of Lauzerte in France's beautiful Quercy province. A lane snakes through the hamlet to a private, tarmacked court where you can move around smoothly and park vehicles, in the shade of a leafy horse-chestnut tree. This court, edged with shrubs and potted plants, links the different buildings together. On one side, there is a house of white Quercy stone with a ground floor and first floor. It is crowned with a gable roof of barrel tiles with a dormer on the south side and it is edged with a terrace, beyond which there is a garden with a swimming pool and meadows that extend across the hillside. Opposite the house, there is an outbuilding of white stone with a three-slope roof of barrel tiles. There is also an agricultural storage building with a three-slope roof, mostly of barrel tiles. The property lies at the edge of the hamlet and offers a magnificent view of the lush, wooded hills of the River Barguelonne valley. The house's north elevation is coated with rendering and punctuated with eight openings, including two doors and five upstairs windows. They are fitted with shutters that are painted white. The western gable wall is made of exposed stonework and has three rectangular windows. On the first floor, these windows are set in white ashlar and fitted with similar shutters. The elevation on the opposite side has no openings. On the south side, plant containers and fragrant shrubs embellish a 30m terrace of pale slabs that edges part of the south elevation, which is made of exposed stonework and brickwork. On the ground floor, there is a protruding section, which a second entrance door leads into. Three broad, rectangular windows look out from it. Upon this protruding section, there is a 40m terrace edged with white-painted guardrails with a motif of circles. On the first floor, two windows fitted with shutters frame a door that leads out onto the terrace. These three openings, which are slightly arched, have surrounds of pale red brickwork.