La Ville Louёt

22/05/2023

Lors de la Fête bretonne, en parallèle des randonnées, plusieurs expositions sont prévues. En effet, la Cuma, qui sera un partenaire majeur de la fête, cette année, prévoit une exposition photos et un petit film qui sera diffusé dans le courant de l’après-midi. Par ailleurs, une expositio...

21/05/2023

The plaque on the cross attached to the barn reads:

"ICI REPOSE LE CORPS
D'ANDRÉ JEAN MARIE LE COROLLER
DÉCEDE LE 20 AVRIL 1913
A L'AGE DE 7 ANS
PRIEZ DIEU POUR LUI."

Which translates as;

"HERE RESTS THE BODY
OF ANDRÉ JEAN MARIE LE COROLLER
DIED 20 APRIL 1913
AT THE AGE OF 7
PRAY TO GOD FOR HIM."

We're not sure how the poor lad died.

17/04/2023

Paintings by the artist Sheila Tuckwell whilst at La Ville Louёt.

29/03/2023

Snow!

29/03/2023

25/03/2023

La Ville Louet Daniel Le Moulic

04/07/2019

Il fait beau, c'est l'été, profitez en ! La piscine de La Chèze est ouverte.
Et soir, vive le premier de la série des

12/11/2018

The second and final raking shore went in yesterday so work can now begin inside the wood-store. Although the second raker was only made from bolted triple 6"x 2"s, at 8.2 meters long it was still a heavy lift. It was also a little complicated getting it into place having to weave it through all the temporary supports for the ladder frame.

First job in the wood-store is to extend all the roof purlins so they can be let back into the gable wall now supported by the new raking shores, but that's for next weekend! :)

07/10/2018

Can't wait to see it all in flower.

Nice light duty job today, fixing heavy duty braided steel cable on the front of the Farmhouse to train our Wisteria along. It's already a mature plant so it will be nice to see it next year hopefully covered in trailing flowers. :)

02/10/2018

Only taken 10 years to get started on this job! The gable wall on our wood-store has been slowly tearing away from the rest of the building at a rate of about 20mm a year. The longer we leave the wall as it is the faster it will tip as the weight shifts more and more to one side. I reckon 5 more years and the wall would be un-savable, the roof purlins have already pulled out and will need to be lengthened after the raking is finished.

There will be a total of two raking shores erected, of which the largest is now in place and supports the centre of the wall (the chimney). The second one will be considerably smaller and will only hold a lower section of wall to one side of the chimney.

The gable wall is nearly a meter thick so the shoring up had to be fairly heavy duty. Bolted 8"x3"s were used for the whole job which made it heavy work. We were able to pull the 4.5 meter ladder frame mostly into place with the Land Rover and some strong rope thrown over the gable end. This was then temporarily fixed in place until the 8.7 meter long raker was fixed to it.

Measurements and angles were taken and rechecked before building the main raker. I knew it was going to be so heavy, it had to go in first time! It had to be built on flat ground out in the garden as there was no room or level ground in the ruin to do it. It then had to be carried 60 meters across the garden and maneuvered into the ruin before positioning it between all the temporary supports holding the ladder frame. This was a hell of a job in itself!

The raker had to be manually lifted 7 meters up two sets of ladders by Baptiste and myself and was a little dangerous and scary to say the very least. Once we started the lift there was no way to safely rest until it was in place!

I think this is the only job where we got no photos of the main lift as I wanted as many hands at the ready in case anything went wrong.

The big lift went fairly smoothly in the end with William and Tracy guiding the bottom end and Baptiste and myself guiding the top tenon in.

I couldn't lift a matchstick after this so the last part (the diagonal brace) was fitted the next day!

Just the smaller raking shore to make now, PHEW!

25/07/2018