When everything goes down, there are options
The Troglodytes: cave-dwellers of France
Is there a serial killer in the building?
From the banks of the Loire, witness to history and a great moving road of grey on its inexorable journey, we stand like mutes looking towards the hills above.
Anne Catherine Sailly, my guide for the day, has as capricious a grasp of English as my own faltering hold on French, and so we begin with smiles and signals and a smattering of language.
We are in Souzay Champigny in the heart of Anjou where, since the 12th-century human beings have lived in caves carved out of the soft tuffeau stone that smears the region in a benevolent cream. Back then, one in two people lived in them. There were workshops and chapels, nuns, farmers, and baronial halls. Up the road, the nuns remain. Six centuries later, high society thrived underground but in modern times the Troglodytes started coming up for air. Many moved out.
A generation ago others moved in, drawn in part by a disdain for modern living and a desire for a simpler, natural existence. The Trogs are back; their presence striking a chord with many now looking for a bijou residence to impress their friends. These are no Neanderthals.
But such dilettantism is tantamount to blasphemy to those who have come for community. It is the age-old thorn of the rich city-dweller turning up for weekends, souring the locals by pushing up prices. Cream may look benevolent, but it has a nasty habit of curdling.
We begin at 31 La Rue de Chateau with a tentative knock on a huge wooden door. Marie Foyer, middle-aged and handsome, smiles warmly and ushers us in. She exchanges Gallic kisses with Anne Catherine, who is in charge of heritage development for Anjou and whose husband manages one of 24 sites where tourists can visit caves.
Marie was one of the first to return to the caves more than 40 years ago and lives a short stroll from where Margaret d’Anjou, twice married to an English king, died in the tiny, crenellated Chateau de Souzay on August 20, 1482. ‘The first cave I bought was in 1972,’ she says. ‘At that time, nobody could understand why people wanted to live in caves. Everybody still living in caves wanted to get out. I bought mine for £100.’
But for those who think cave dwelling is a cinch, Marie warns, ‘Every time something is written people say they want to buy but it is not so easy. Generally, there is a lot of work to do.’
Prices have risen exponentially, one estate agent was advertising a two-bed dwelling for around £60,000 nearly 20 years ago, although another cave dweller, stonemason Didier Mercier, bought his at that time for around £14,000.
Inside number 31, the quarried face of the rock merges in places with breezeblocks of tuffeau. Indian tapestries draw the eye to a fireplace fronted by a red cylindrical piped stove. Kali the cat and Zenobie, a giant hound, share what is a commodious and agreeable home with Marie and daughter Matilde.
A kitchen and bathroom have all mod cons and any problems of damp are countered by allowing a regular through flow of air — although the asthmatic in me is visibly flinching. We are led through a passageway out of another door and into a courtyard.
’Two or three families once lived here,’ Marie explains. Like other Troglodytes, she wants to go into the bed and breakfast business. There is no financial support from the local authority in aiding the Troglodytes to restore the caves and anyone undertaking what can be dark, dangerous work does so at their own peril.
‘There have been deaths down the years,’ says Anne Catherine alarmingly, ‘but not many.’ Metal and fibreglass rods are used to make caves safe, but if maintenance is not kept up then sites need to be avoided.
Francky — a self-taught and self-made painter — has the exalted mien of a man who has defied convention and won
However, if the tuffeau was dangerous, shaven-headed artist Francky Criquet, living beneath the flat plains of Deneze-sous-Doue might have been more so.
As we arrived in his designer cave, heat rose from a mammoth open fire and I spotted the first of around a dozen human skulls.
‘Are you a cannibal?’ I asked.
I was only half-joking and awaited either a toothy lunge or the genesis of a more affable connection.
‘Me, no,’ he answered. ‘I just like the form.’
‘Where did you get them?’
‘Turkey, Italy, Spain,’ and then, still pointing, ‘male, female, male, male, female.’ He was doing his best Ted Bundy.
In broken English, he said he had picked them up in auctions and street markets, their history too hard to convey.
‘Some people think Francky is crazy,’ said Anne Catherine, ‘but he is not.’
In fact, Francky — a self-taught and self-made painter — has the exalted mien of a man who has defied convention and won. His agent rolls up once a month, buys his latest works and sells them in galleries in Palm Beach and across the globe.
‘I like the caves because there are many possibilities for the artist and I like the light,’ he says. The light quality of the stone and natural light from the studio’s covered roof, doors, and windows contrast with Francky’s grand tour of a labyrinth of undeveloped caverns, which leaves the uninitiated covered in dust and stumbling in the dark.
It is, of course, a perfect setting for cannibals and serial killers, and it hasn’t escaped my attention.
But we emerge for wine and a view of the half-finished lagoon-like marble kitchen which, like Francky himself, is big-hearted and expansive which, despite the asthma, gives me some breathing room.
But death is never far away: gravestones have been built into the walls.
Where Marie Foyer’s cave was ethnic kitsch and Francky’s a designer work in progress, the Merciers’ at Grezille is a family home. Bold orange curtains and red woodwork in the living room sit comfortably with a state-of-the-art kitchen cut into from the living room by Didier. Son Clovis, aged six, is in front of the TV in a scene straight out of suburbia, though not quite.
We strain for language once more, tired now with the effort, and Isabelle, who works with adults with learning difficulties and raises three children, tells me of minor problems: ‘The furniture is flat and the walls are bent, The ceiling is very high and at the moment we are infested with spiders.’
The cavalry arrives in the form of Mark, a German friend, with a welcome fluency in two needed tongues. Didier, like the other Trogs, likes his caves because they are both economic and aesthetic, provide space for the kids, and are part of the region’s heritage.
Others form wine cellars, restaurants and a breeding ground for mushrooms that supply much of France. Visitors can stay overnight, but not here, he adds quickly, this is a family home.
There are jokes about the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066 and cider and apple cake is produced as we slump after a heavy lunch and pass knowing winks to acknowledge what we share not that which separates.
The Merciers have been living underground for two years after life in a town centre apartment. When they arrived, windows and doors existed, but there was no electricity and the dwelling had been abandoned for ten years.
There is pride in restoring them. ‘Rich people are investing only with money not with their heart and it has started to become expensive,’ says Didier. ‘You need to maintain the caves, but you have to live in them all the time to maintain them. If you live here for only three months a year it gets extremely damp. It is not good for the life of the community.’
Yet these Trogs, some separated by miles, hardly mix and like homeowners everywhere, get on with the business of making their own peculiar brand of nest as comfortable as possible.
In the bowels of the earth, in France’s largest concentration of manmade caves, the light floods in. Only a coincidence of cocoons and human skulls, providing images from The Silence Of The Lambs, serves to remind one of the depravities that can happen in the dark.
The rest is strictly Homes and Gardens.
Copyright Simon Heathcote
