THE HISTORY OF LE GÉLIBERT
Le Gélibert is actually the name of the hamlet of five houses of which our house is one. The house itself was only ever known by the name of its owner and only recently acquired a number (420) to aide Amazon deliveries - 420 is the distance in meters from the start of the road to the house.
There is evidence that habitation in the area dates back to the Neolithic period as the cave paintings at Lascaux attest. However, it is hard to say when our little hamlet first appeared, we do know that 'Gélibert' is Merovingian, so the name at least dates from this period - roughly AD500 -700. The Merovingians were a tribe which emanated from ancient Gaul and, following the breakdown of the Roman Empire, established sway over a large area of what has become modern France. The Merovingian "Empire" and its successor, the Carolingian Empire, are generally seen as the antecedents of what gradually evolved into the state of France.
The oldest building in present day Gélibert is the fortified 'Manoir' next door to our house which dates back to the 15th century. The Manoir originally faced onto the old road between Lusignac and Ribérac (you can still see the trackway running along the bottom of our garden) and was probably built here because of the spring which still flows in the woods below the Manoir. I imagine the combination of a spring and high ground would make this an attractive location in lawless times. M. and Mme. Prot who own the Manoir have lovingly restored the original building as well as added to it and maintained the architecture perfectly.
As far as our house is concerned, the date 1860 is carved into the stonework around the well (built into the small outbuilding) and we assume most of the farm was built around that date. It would certainly coincide with a growth in rural incomes which occurred from the mid-19th century onwards as railways connected even isolated rural backwaters to the large towns and the wider economy. Ribérac had good rail connections east to Perigueux, south to Montepon and westwards to the main Paris-Bordeaux line by the late 19th century.
The original house would have consisted of two upstairs and two downstairs rooms of which only two were inhabited - the downstairs bedroom with the fireplace was the salon and the upstairs bedroom with the fireplace, obviously, the bedroom. We think the other upstairs bedroom might have been a hayloft (the shape and size of the window suggests it would have been a door) while the second downstairs bedroom probably had doors where the windows are and might have been a stall for animals.
The barn which is now the open plan living area was probably not constructed at the same time as the rest of the house but has always been there as far as a previous elderly neighbour, M. Charbonneau, can remember. He also recalls the farm's cows being kept in stalls where our sitting area and wood burner are.
The farm's well is built into the small outbuilding which also contains a large bread oven and wood fired water boiler. M. Charbonneau described how the oven was used, not only for making bread, but also for drying fruit and how the storage jars would be sterilised in the water boiler. He also mentioned that the boiler was used for cooking pig swill!
Through M. Charbonneau we also learned about the previous occupants of the house. His grandfather, Auguste Dudegerac, lived in the house from about 1880 until his death, sometime in the inter-war years. The next occupant of the house was M. Labussiere who passed it on to his daughter (Mme. Chalar) who owned it until it was sold in 1970 to its first English owners, the Klumacs.
Subsequently, the house was bought by a neighbour of the Klumacs' in the UK, who sold it to the Smyth’s in 2003 and then to its current owners (us, the Streetings) in 2022.
Through most of its life the house has been a working farm, ceasing only when Mme. Chalar became too old to continue. The house has brought much joy to many families and friends and we hope it continues to do so for many years to come.
