Introducing Laporte

Laporte is the name of the house which means “The door” in French and is a beautifully renovated Maison de Maître (Mansion). It was built with thick walls made of local natural stone and Toulousan tiles. Part of the house was constructed around 1780 and the structure began the restoration by two previous owners and an extremely detailed makeover was done by ourselves.

Laporte itself has an interesting history, including the claimed to be original gun holes on the side of the house and the ancient roman walking trail that runs alongside the house.

This house has lived through much history and change over the years and did become close to ruin, but it is our pleasure to invest in such a magnificent building. It was also used as a farm for many years, but for livestock, not crops. We have a lot less land than originally went with the house, but we are doing our best to revive the health of our soils with a mix of agroforestry and permaculture practices.

Unfortunately, historically much rubbish and construction material were just thrown on the land. Therefore for us to make the land useable, we first had to pull out truckloads of rubbish, bottles and "blue string" from the bales of hay that was discarded when the animals were fed.

It's hard to imagine now, when you see these colourful landscapes, just how much back-work we put into restoring the land. Being built on a steep plateau, machine work is very difficult. It has taken tremendous effort to look like what should be "a normal country landscape" and we are still working on it.