By JEAN RAFFERTY
Published: October 6, 2011
LOUVERSEY, FRANCE — Chateau, manoir, folie — Saint-Calais, a Louis XIII-style country house outside this Normandy village in the Iton Valley, could answer to all of those descriptions.
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Built in 1663 as a hunting lodge for Jean Martel, the bailiff’s lieutenant in Évreux, the rectangular, red brick and stone one-story structure possesses the allure of a small chateau in its refined architecture and deftly carved detailing, along with unusual, almost identical front and back facades. It was reconfigured into a five-room manor house in the early 18th century, featuring a grand salon and two wings with a ledged roof.
The Commission de Monuments Historiques, which lists French landmarks, has taken an on-the-fence stance to categorizing the building, calling it “Chateau known as Manoir Saint-Calais.”
Another intriguing aspect is the view of the manor outside the front entrance, whose impressive stone pillars and wrought iron gate are listed landmarks.
“When you see the magnificent gate from a distance, the eye sees the house as huge,” said Michel Perrin, a Frenchman who with his wife, Sally, an American, is Saint-Calais’s owner.
“In the 17th century, they would call it a folie, meaning it is a smaller structure with the ambition to look majestic,” he said. “The allée of two double ranks of landmark lime trees gets narrower close to the house so you get the impression of infinity. It’s a trompe l’oeil.”
But there is nothing trompe l’oeil about the manor’s charm.
The luminous salon/living room, decorated with striking red boiseries and a Louis XV stone fireplace, runs from the front of the house to the back. It has French windows opening onto the entrance on the west and onto a formal French garden with an antique fountain on the east.
Off this central room, one wing houses a small sitting or games room, whose stunning blue and white faïence de Rouen fireplace is the only remnant of an 18th-century décor when the walls were covered entirely in this porcelain. There is also a dining room and guest powder room.
The other wing has two bedrooms with en suite bathrooms. A kitchen was added off the dining room in the 20th century.
Surrounded by fields and forest, the property, which covers nearly 3 hectares, or 7.4 acres, also includes the 17th-century chaumière, a half-timbered Normandy building, now used as a guest cottage. It contains a sitting room, three bedrooms, shower, small gym, sauna and laundry room.
Another half-timbered structure on the grounds is divided into an atelier, storage room, stables with three horse stalls and a small upstairs office. And next to the entrance is a two-story caretaker’s house, with living room, bedroom, kitchen and shower.
The landscaped grounds feature an orchard, lawn and rose garden surrounding a swimming pool and a pool house that was converted from an old bread oven. There are two paddocks where a family of three donkeys is still in residence, a garden shed and rose-bedecked children’s playhouse. An adjoining field of almost one and a half hectares is rented out.
Owned by Martel’s descendants until 1812, Saint-Calais passed through a succession of owners until the Perrins bought it in 1997. The couple, who met in Seattle when Mr. Perrin was at Microsoft and Mrs. Perrin was a model, had been looking for a weekend getaway for themselves and their two daughters, Chloé, now 20, and Emma, 17.
The manor was completely restored in 1982 by the previous owner, but 15 years later, “it was like a beautiful woman with great bone structure who needed a new dress,” Mrs. Perrin said. And she jumped to the task.
“I would spend afternoons at the Salle Drouot auction house, learning how to work it,” she said, “and days at fabric houses Pierre Frey and Braquenié, just doing research and respecting the colors of the walls and the period of the house. It was a labor of love.”
The manor’s inviting interiors today reflect the Perrins’ decorative efforts. Throughout the house, the rooms are furnished with antiques and period paintings of portraits and bucolic scenes. Highlights include an 18th-century Italian gilded wood chandelier, finely chiseled bronze Louis XV sconces and a bust of Madame du Barry, set off against the warm red boiseries of the large living room.
In the dining room, a festive country scene of a couple dancing a minuet, a collection of antique silver and a solid-mahogany 18th-century commode catch the eye.
The Perrins also carried out renovations, adding built-in cupboards and a breakfast/dining area to the kitchen and extending the chaumière with more guest rooms and a laundry room.
Every Friday night, the family would leave Paris to spend the weekend in Normandy.
“Saint-Calais is a magical place,” Mrs. Perrin said. “We had horses, donkeys and chickens. Every morning, the girls would get the fresh eggs from under the hens. We made cider from the apples in the orchard. And on Saturday mornings during the season, we saw the beautiful parade of the hunters on horses, with their trumpets, going after wild boar.”
The Perrins’ country entertaining had a French or an American flavor. They ranged, Mrs. Perrin said, “from extravagant lunches with fine wines that lasted three, four, five hours to a barn dance with Tex-Mex food and a mechanical bull.
“It was a riot,” she recalled. “We have had a glorious decade there.”
In 2007, Mr. Perrin, a software entrepreneur, decided to join his brother at his family’s leather company, founded in France in 1893. As Mrs. Perrin also joined the new creative team, they added a line of luxurious leather fashion accessories to the company’s core business as a supplier of fine leather to haute couture houses.
The first Perrin flagship opened in Beverly Hills in 2009, followed by a Paris store in January.
Now based in Los Angeles and spending much of their time on the business, the couple have decided to put Saint-Calais on the market through Philip Hawkes, a real estate agent in Paris.
The asking price is €1.5 million, or about $2 million, with the furnishings and art being offered for sale separately.
“I really love the house, but in the last two years, we have only spent two weeks there,” Mr. Perrin said with regret.
“French people who come here say that Saint-Calais looks as if someone took a magic wand and transformed a big chateau into a miniversion. The manor has all the charm of a beautiful period home, yet it is livable for a family. That’s huge.”
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