Quissac, Languedoc-Roussillon 30260

In the Cevennes foothills, an old agricultural estate of 7 ha, with a 17th century farmhouse, mansion, outbuildings and a 19th century cellar. A short distance from Quissac, the 7-hectare estate extends to the east and west, on either side of four buildings grouped together in a private hamlet: a cellar, a vast farm known as "the grand mas", a dovecote and the winegrower's residence. Access to the property is via the road that leads to the old agricultural courtyard. The mansion, which crosses the countryside, is located on the opposite side of this departmental road, facing vineyards and woods. Strongly testifying, through the articulation of its elements, to a past wine-growing activity, the property has visibly known several destinies. An artisanal sericulture activity may have preceded viticulture, before land dismemberment put a stop to it. And other uses followed them - for example, the old cellar has now been transformed into workshops and reception rooms. In the foothills of the Cévennes, the construction of buildings, often austere, obeys the only laws that work and rural housing have been able to dictate over time. The periods of construction differ from one element to another and oscillate essentially between the beginning and the end of the 19? s., architectural interventions having also aimed to unify the whole with the 20? and 21? s. The mansion, built at the end of the 19? s., has rather curiously adopted the model of local silkworm farms, sober and largely open to the south. The cellar, from the same period, was refurbished after a collapse of the roof in the central part. The "grand mas", which was probably a rural dwelling with its few low vaulted rooms, provides an obvious example of construction built on earlier remains, probably from the end of the 17th century. s. Or the beginning of the 18th? s. The dovecote, in red bricks, built on the roof of outbuildings used as housing, dates from the beginning of the 20th? s. And it gathers around it a series of small terraced houses that are currently used as rental housing. The ensemble, whose attraction is all the more effective as the natural environment has been preserved from various damages, offers an interesting testimony to the daily life of Cévennes viticulture. Its contemporary rehabilitation, not completed in places, has given it a certain homogeneity.