TOUR the PRIVATE Chateau de Rosières and DISCOVER its 2000 year old MYSTERY!

welcome to the spectacular medieval Chateau de Rosier in the beautiful ardesh region of France today we are not only going to be exploring inside the castle itself we're also going to be seeing how this estate dates back over 3 000 years and we'll meet the owners who are bringing it back to life many of you may recognize Mark and Amy from British TV or from their YouTube channel the great shatter restoration project we were staying here last night and just woke up in the most beautiful bedroom and I cannot wait to show it to you later it is spectacular yeah well we ordered you some nice weather um so we thought we might start outside didn't we sounds like a good idea we brought you down to the Garden here because this really shows you what an outcrop we're on this was uh primarily defensive location and it was chosen because the outcrop is a natural defense that goes out into the valley so you can see the marauding troops coming up either valleys from miles it was the heart of the religious wars around here this place has seen quite a bit of action Protestant Catholic fighting yes and before that it was French English fighting during the hundreds hundred years yeah it's only now that the Region's getting a bit of a break and that they will allow an English Protestant into the Chateau don't near it tolerate yeah one of the things we love the most here is all the different periods that are cramming into each other and that we try have to try and unpick so we've got this several thousand year old history but the main shutter itself we know dates from at least the 15th century and that we have records of a chateau before that from 1301 is the earliest date that we have we've got these beautiful Oaks that go around the edge of the earthwork and then we have these much later Terraces where they try to reclaim control of the gardens and actually use it for beauty but also for practicality because on a slope you can't actually grow anything these date from around we think think probably the 19th century and they also hide some interesting secrets to uncover more about this secret we have to take you on to the lower Terrace had a visit from somebody um who lived here in the 1940s and he told us about this Terrace so One Thing Mark has always wondered about is some of the jumble of rocks here in this Terrace and he always said to me that he thought there was something else going on here really can you see anywhere that looks like it's been messed with well I'm guessing and I could be wrong is this bit because it looks like the start of an arch is there an ending of the arch oh yes there right well there's a whole lot yeah so there was a buried orangerie here I know that person told us he remembered several arches along this Terrace and my guess is that there were three of them because the wool has three parts where it's grouted with cement there would have been a place where they overwintered the plants and things like that with the sunlight imagine with this beautiful sunlight coming in one of the things I was wondering is that on old postcards of the house you see they had big parts of Orlando's right at the front yes and they were obviously really really big and Orlando's are not hard in the area no so it had always been wondering where they kept them in the winter and now you know so down here we're going to go and see more of the estate so that's the remains of the old world that surrounded the whole the states maybe six or seven meters tall to be spectacular it would have been incredible the goals 2000 years ago were really keen on big earth work and the but they would have wooden buildings on top of it these buildings would be long gone but all the stone worked remain so we could be looking at the remains of a three thousand year old wall here yeah possibly two or three thousand yeah it's an impressive amount of students when you use you considered they had to carry them all by hand they have been a wild boar here oh is that wild boar yeah they're like churning up it's okay as long as they don't go in the vegetable garden it really is a wondrous land with all of these moss-covered ancient stones and the views and the valley in the distance most of the yolks that are planted along the wall were probably planted at the same time as the world was built what we see is the earth Springs of the original one but actually the size of the stump this is only one Oak that used to have several trunks but one original Oak the area is really really dry and then look like that grows very slowly so this one is probably many hundred years old and it's still alive today and to think that we're walking in the footsteps of people who've been here for more Millennia these are actually all the path ion covered since we've arrived they were completely covered in trees and brambles but Mark worked out that there would always have been a path here because it is exactly in between the wall here and a smaller wall leading to the next Terrace so this was always a path bordered with Oaks it's quite likely that no one used this path for over 100 years that is some way to make an entrance to say that suits you it's the time to get you around I thought this might help I love it in the 1960s the entire estate was planted in Douglas Fern they wrecked the old Terraces and the whole thing was just this big black dark somber mess and what we're trying to do is encourage biodiversity different growth and create some different spaces and so I'm going to take you now to what we call the sunken garden which we're going to be planted as a subtropical uh formal Gardens we're very very excited about this I'm loving this I wish I had one of these at home so that's a really sheltered area because it's World on three sides which means we don't get any wind and so it never gets really really cold we also have a spring in this Garden which means that we'll be able to water it so what sort of plants I'm quite interested in the Flora of Japan and Eastern China because there are really interesting plants that you don't see very often and in that you're absolutely working in the tradition because these big houses and the Chateau stately homes of England they always imported plants yeah I'm really fascinated by the plant hunting time period from the 18th century three when people would visit places discover new places and bring back plans from their travels and it's really what I'd like to recreate here so it's in perspective our honeymoon was decided on where the weirdest plants were for enough thousand no five thousand five thousand meter Mountain bigger than Montblanc with no training on your honeymoon days through bogs and but there was quite it was quite cool um I was snow blinded and all sorts and nearly broke my ankle um but you had a great time and then afterwards we went to this luxury Lodge as a kind of uh cell to me and but I couldn't actually have a bath because the bath was full of all his plant samples this is the alleyway that was put in in the 19th century and what I'm going to do is take you down to the old entrance to the Chateau and how old is the old entrance probably the original one so we're talking about could have been from medieval times but for sure we know that um it was around in the 17th 16th century they would have come up here and then a straight ahead is the coach house so I might take you straight to the Coach House to see because this is our big renovation project here you are arriving in your chariot and this is the start of our Retreat Center that we're building and this will be the main area where people can have their food and cook and eat and there's some accommodation at the top yeah we're quite proud of it because it's completely derelict when we first moved in here let's go and have a look inside when we arrived this was completely derelict so there were walls on the outside but the ceiling had fallen in there were no windows it was a real real mess and it's the first place that we really tackled in the restoration I love the doors they're quite good we had them made locally so they're made with Chestnut Wood which is the big wood of the area all our philosophy on the restoration work is to use local materials and traditional techniques it's currently used to store a lot of stuff so excuse the mess the key thing here is it fits in with our sustainability idea self-sustainability so these are our trees on the ceiling and the tomat tiles that we got are from burgundy so it's not that far from here we had local stone masons so they know the local techniques about how to manage the stones we kept quite a lot of the old features because it was the coach house we found an Old Forge in the corner so is this where they would have done all of the repairs for the coaches themselves but also for the shoes of the horses the reason we think that is because there was lots of charcoal in the area around here and there were also bits of metal everywhere so horse shoes and and nails and things like that we can't know for sure I'm sure they wouldn't have had a full-time farrier but um yeah for sure they used this to do some of the metal work it's great that you're keeping everything yeah and I really really do love the fact that you've used your trees and so visibly as well yeah leaving the bark on now we're going to go up the external staircase of the Coach House to see what you've done upstairs yes we're accompanied by quite a lot of animals on our way today we're well accompanied oh this is Lovely Isn't it nice and this was completely fallen in we divided it up into just two rooms with ensuite bathrooms which will be part of the retreat center eventually but for the moment this is where we're hoping to live sooner rather than later the thing holding most of it up at the moment is me making the tiles for the bathrooms you're making them yourself yes this is where I'm making a splashback for as you can see I've been sketching on the wall it's so lovely you're putting your own stamp on the place yeah we really want to do things that tie in with the history of the place but also come very much from us all along this side there are some really interesting features that were probably used for the stable boy or somebody who worked here there's a fireplace and then beside it there are these three little trays with holes in the bottom and they would have been used to put Embers in from the fire and then cook the food and then the cooled Embers fall in the bottom get scooped out chucked out the window or put outside and then beside it is this little Stone sink which just would have gone straight to the outside and then the cupboard so this was probably somebody's mini Kitchen in the past and we decided to keep all those features and make them a part of the future as well it's actually quite Advanced for this day in the 19th century this would have been luxury yeah next stop on the tour I'm going to send you up with Mark in the the ranger to see the top of the estate the old Gaul platforms from thousands of years ago and some of our big sustainability projects and our wine project oh I love it and I love going the ranger anyway so this is what suggests that the states have been lived in for several thousands of years yes we don't know exactly what it is it is a kind of oval-shaped platform with big stones on the Edge smaller stones in the middle a hole in the middle and some kind of lines of Standing Stones around it how mysterious it feels almost ritualistic it could be a burial site it could be an astronomic observatory or something because we're right at the top of the Ridge one thought is that if you put a big stake in the middle you might be able to line the Shadow with some of the stones around we don't know how old it is it's probably at the earliest 2000 years old yeah the youngest maybe uh 30 or 40 000 years old it feels to me I have to say it feels older than 2000 years yeah it could well be this feels almost more symbolic than architectural 2000 years ago you've been expecting maybe more architecture this this feels different well you don't know really because it could be a base for a wooden building at the top wouldn't be there anymore it is really mysterious to him thank you and there is this hole in the middle it will be it could be a signal platform or something like that I'm blown away by this we visited so many shadows and we've never seen such an ancient mystery in any of them this I'm sure is the oldest we've had the team of archeology students with their professors coming here with their professors were medievists they said it was too ancient for them this is all the way around the platform oh my goodness that's completely Hollow why why did they build it in that way and there's another one here yeah I think he's straight in when are the things thing I can't explain is this yellow deposit here on the stones it looks like silver to me there shouldn't be that much sulfur in Granite mystery upon mystery yeah if any of you have any ideas then please let us know in the comments below because really this is the mystery that still needs to be solved I wouldn't be able to sleep at night living here like wanting to solve the mystery I would love to to huge [Music] yeah so this is assistant yeah so that's probably 19th century it was yeah it was completely overgrown when we arrived there were trees growing on top of the The Vault we dug it out I did some leveling around and we had it re-plastered with lime the spring is about 300 meters from here uphill I guess and it's just coming straight down to this yeah very Gravity the pipe had been broken somewhere because it crosses the road and as it had been lost we had to put a new pipe all the way so frustrating yeah now we are self-sufficient with water and we're able to water our garden from here it's gravity fed straight down yeah the Chateau is just under here you must have great water pressure on it because that's quite a slope going there you can see it's quite deep as well huge it's empty at the moment I wanted to clean it I'm going to open the tab to show you the water we have nothing but trouble with our garden water and the water pressure I am really proud actually because the it was all their work it had been completely abandoned well done it's a huge achievement and from here you can see just how great the drop is so the water pressure is huge by the time it gets to the gardens and what a spectacular view of the Chateau now we are going to see one of our latest projects Terraces we just cleared to plant some Vineyards in the springtime do Vines grow well here Yes actually I have records that Vines were already planted on the estate in the 9th century mine said that all the valley used to belong to amongst the Abbey of San Bernard in Romeo in their records they're talking about Vineyards being planted down the valid leaderhon which is this one it may have taken a thousand years but finally are returning to meet exactly I know I know it's possible to grow Vines so and I like wine so one of my great great grandmothers set up wine business in Champaign in 1808 and this wine business has been in the family since then it's really a family thing so now we need to have a big bonfire to burn the stumps and hopefully we'll be planting in the spring do you use wine taste more I'm sure it does when you come up here and drink the wine that you've produced from The Vines from this soil that's the best how much wine should you be able to produce from these two Terraces six thousand bottles or something like that I think that'll be just about enough [Music] a bit tight let's go and have a look around the house uh the moment everyone's been waiting for the staircase oh hello Clement and hello Juliet oh you've got a car to show everybody have you that is an excellent car I'm going to show you the Grand salon oh what a huge room and filled with beautiful things it's a bit sort of antique junk at the moment as in it's all just a big jumble of treasures we found or things we've had in our lives in here it's the place that we store all our favorite antiques that we've bought and the bargains we found and the things we both had before we were married we know that it was closed off for most of the last century and possibly even earlier nobody used it because it was just the big Grand room what a shame I know and we really want it that's part of our philosophy is to bring back every corner of the Chateau to life and so the children play on the floor in here she's already ready to get down leave and stop playing we try and play the piano with the kids in the evenings the best thing about it is the evening song comes into here so it's really beautiful place to sit in the early evening it is so identical I'm sure so many people around the world will be watching this just thinking this huge Chateau children able to run around ever explore the place brought with all this history and nature it's amazing what you're doing you're doing thank you it's a bit of a balancing app because children also like to play with delicate antiques end in disaster sometimes but we just let we also like the juxtaposition of antiques and Lego yeah yeah what are some of your favorite pieces in here I'd say weirdly Mark will massively disagree with me but this Bureau it's an art deco one and we got it as a set with a table and it was an auction in Lyon nobody wanted it and we think we got the entire set for 150 Euros it wasn't fashionable and it's got this most beautiful Market tree and it's just a real statement piece the fun here is finding pieces that you couldn't put anywhere else like in our little apartments we had before or the house we lived in before this was a tiny wooden house in a jungle in the West Indies the whole house was smaller than this room and so we've gone from that to this and we really like to celebrate that with massive pieces of furniture nobody else won but in fact there's quite a link it means that you're really good at choosing the best places to live yeah it was pretty good and we did sort of live outside a lot there which is I think why the outdoors is always attracting us to here but in terms of now managing to buy huge pieces of furniture you tell us more about the painting because that would not fit in a flat no exactly one of the massive tricks was trying to hang that thing I actually insisted that we had an inflatable bed underneath it for the first two months every year this auction house in Leon which is quite close to the Alps do a fabulous Mountain sale and they have paintings and artifacts from the Alps we just loved it it's perfect here the major puzzle and I don't know if you or anybody watching can help us is we can't work out which mountain it is whereas we've got other Mountain pictures in the Chateau and we've gone and we've found where they are and we've stood where they actually would were painting yes but this one it's a real mystery so if any of you think you know then please let us know in the comments do you recognize this mountain I'm gonna be honest I'm not scared it's skiing too fast but I love just sitting in mountains and looking at them and being in the snow and stuff that brings that part of our Lives into the Chateau I like the fun doing the hot one oh yeah me too I think we definitely have the same approach right we're going to take a dining room this room is the party piece room of the Chateau at the moment we've done the most work in here I'd say it's not used in Winter because it's very very cold no radiators and single glazing lots of Windows beautifully bright for the moment I use it as a sort of workstation for my tile project that I was telling you about this is a splashback I think they're absolutely stunning do you like them absolutely love them but that glaze it's so lustrous yeah it's a nice one isn't it for a first go I think it's not too bad I've been doing a whole load of videos about this but I was quite happy with these you know these handmade ones and the glaze on it I love the uneven handmade quality yes definitely what I was going for wait yeah it's big success thank you this really big piece of furniture is a Swiss dresser that they found at an auction in Normandy when do you think it dates from late 16th century or early 17th it is probably mostly from the typing period but it might have been changed a little bit it is a really stunning piece of furniture in my opinion it was really meant to be in a dining room like this one because it has this little Fountain it's a tin Fountain and the idea is that you would come in through the door wash your hands before going for dinner and then help yourself with the food that would be on display on the dresser it's so ingenious I've never seen anything like it I think very few people have seen anything like it what I find really interesting is the market tree work on it because it's not painted or anything it's all inlaid little pieces of wood a lot of different woods and the color gradient was made by dipping the piece of wood into hot sand so that it would burn one side they would manage to do very subtle nuances of wood and so they burnt the edges to make them look like bricks but your whole Chateau is filled with fascinating things that if we had time we could spend a whole video on each room here just the object inside and this is a perfect example of that if you ignore the junk in here you can see the most amazing fireplace that we uncovered I can't get over the size of it well it's incredible and when we moved in here it actually only went up to just behind these windows and the height current height there we had no idea what was behind it and there was a modern insert and it wasn't working terribly well and we weren't sure about it and then one day there was a bird stuck in the pipe and that was it so we decided to destroy and rescue the bird which was a baby Kestrel actually when we hacked it away we found the original fireplace and an old bread oven and what was really puzzling us was the fireplace starts stopped around here and sort of nearly knee height and the bread oven was really high up what's that all about and what we've always noticed in here is the flowing of the Bedrock through the room so it comes really far into it it feels really strange you've almost got the mountain in the Chateau that's extraordinary yeah that's actually better yeah there's not a stone and what we realized was that they had lowered the floor in this room to make it look grander in the 19th century with the gothic Arch over there and they wanted big windows and it no longer needed to be a defensive Fortress so they just wanted to make it beautiful so they lowered the floor in here and so this was a pretty ingenious way a fairly harmful way besides of going into the bedroom but it is ingenious but what we did in our restoration of it was to have the stonemason carve an identical piece of stone there so it looks like the fireplace continues to answer as though it's always been there this is only the first big discovery that we made here and to show you more about what we've been looking at I'll take you through to the sellers this is one of the big Mysteries of the Chateau it's a staircase that's inside the wall so in the it was built in the thickness of the world and it's been worked for at least one century probably more can I have a look let's see how far I can go it is Century so this dates from the 1400s and just stops here what is behind you we don't know because there's a wall and we can go past it so one day we will reel and see what's behind you have to find out what if the treasure is there I really can't wait and that's not the only secret of this part of the house because we recently learned that there are sellers underneath we started investigating about that uh recently in one of our latest videos so if any of you want to find out more about the hidden sellers then go over to Mark and Amy's channel the great Chateau restoration project before we go I do have one request could you show everybody the absolutely stunning bedroom that Philip and I stayed in last night with pleasure on our way to the most beautiful bedroom imaginable Mark has offered to show us one of the ancient documents of the Chateau so these are very ancient manuscripts that we were lucky to to find the written in Latin on Vietnam which is the animal skins this one for instance is dated 1477 and this is the wheel of the owner of the Chateau de Lord of The Chateau at the time his name was the dragon and he's probably the one who rebuilt The Chateau after the Hundred Years War as it is now and it's a very emotional document because he leaves money for his daughter to marry he leaves his gray fur coat to the priests in San Felicia a little personal touches yeah really really emotional I have done my best to time but obviously we were staying in this room last night isn't it the most beautiful room imaginable we decided to decorate this room first uh it was the most beautiful room in the Chateau most beautiful bedroom anyway the light streams in you can see the Alps and the mountains of the massive Central and the only problem we had was the walls were very tired 70s faded wallpaper and we decided to do something very special in here and put fabric back on the walls which would have been a traditional wall covering it mutes the sound a little bit so it stops it sounding too cold and echoey and it's very traditional but we put our own twist on it and we commissioned a lady who does Shin wazuri wallpapers to paint our Fabrics with reference to our lives in here so it became our room and it's very special to us and so we have panels along the back which represent elements of our life here in Hozier we have panels on the sides which represent our lives in the Caribbean their marketing system and being very specific birds in there that we'd seen and then we have panels on this side which represent our incredible terrifying honeymoon in the ruins or mountains of Uganda and so when we sleep in here which actually isn't very often these days but we wake up and see these views from our life and it's beautiful and bright and the children love it I can't describe how much I loved it I think it's one of the most beautiful and touching wall decorations that I've ever seen in a bedroom because it's so personal and symbolic for you that's really kind of used to say so I mean it's obviously not fitted properly yet we had some issues with the fabric creasing but we put them up just to see if they would look good and they do so we've just got to finish that bit of it we're going to move on to the top floor long term this will be the luxury uh bed and breakfast room that we rent out from time to time I have to tell you that you might have some difficulty shifting else from this room once you open the BMB because we just love it so much and the whole Chateau is spectacular filled with history and nature in a way that we haven't seen in many of the other chateaus we've visited because you have such a huge estate with these spectacular views and history going back 3000 years that is very very special so thank you so much for showing us around oh it's been really glorious having you here it's so nice to have such positive people coming and people who understand our projects and appreciate it but you're coming to the land soon I really hope so excellent look forward to seeing you there wonderful

Channel: Stephanie's Grand Tour of Europe

Views: 129,243

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Id: 4-uBKhsdLVU

Length: 29min 51sec (1791 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 20 2022