Laborie

The back story

On January 7th 1944 Cyril Watney and George Hiller were dropped by parachute into France. They were with the SOE (the Special Operations Executive, set up by Churchill) and their mission was to lend assistance to the French resistance. They landed at night on the causses near Magnagues. Cyril remained in Lot until the end of the war, and had many adventures, risking execution if he was found by the Germans. He was a wanted ‘terrorist’ and went under the nom-de-guerre Michel.

Cyril was only 21 years old at the time, and he made a lot of friends among the //resistants//, notably Georges and Odette Bru who were very prominent in the VENY groups in the Lot. After the war was over he made many visits back to the area and always tried to attend the annual reunions celebrated by the //resistants//. Some of his friends persuaded him that he should buy a house (he was a bookseller at the time and had few financial resources to draw upon). One night he was told by a friend that he had found just the right house for him, and they left the dinner party in order to see it. The house was in a hamlet called Laborie and it was in quite bad condition, because it had been unoccupied for many years. On May 12th 1967 Cyril completed the purchase of the property.

There were some fairly formidable challenges to be overcome. The floor needed replacing, and through his contacts Cyril had an oak floor installed. There was no bathroom (we think there was an outhouse in the garden), and Cyril had a room partitioned off the main bedroom, putting in basic plumbing, a toilet, shower and sink. This was a long narrow room, with no natural light. A friend drew up plans for a basic kitchen workspace, with a counter top, a sink and cabinets under the work surface. For some odd reason the counter top was some 10 cms lower than it should have been. This is especially odd since Cyril was a tall man! Electricity was connected and basic wiring done. The water supply was arranged from a spring up the hill and shared with the Bel farm. The water was good, but the supply was unpredictable. The garden was not very large, but it had a tendency to become completely overgrown with brambles.

There was a loft or ‘grenier’ and in exploring this Cyril found that it had been lived in for some time, mostly likely by an American deserter whose jeep was found abandoned nearby. Cyril found his dog-tags in the loft and also a rudimentary antenna which the man must have used for his radio. The house next door was owned by a Scottish colonel, Colonel Douglas.

Our first visits

Cyril was my godfather, having become a firm friend of my father’s. They met in Canada after the war. I met Cyril when I was 10 years old during a visit to London. He very generously gave me my first camera: a Kodak Brownie, of which I was very proud! In 1973, after finishing at Trent, I moved to London, and contacted Cyril. I had lunch with hima a couple of times, and hoped he might be able to offer me a job. He would have liked to, but the bookshop he jointly owned with his brother in Hertford barely gave the two of them a living.

Cyril told me that he had a house in France and said that I was welcome to use it whenever I wanted. Over the years he was to repeat the offer, and it was not until 1986 that Sherry and I finally took him up on it. We enjoyed a slow trip through France, camping mostly, and turned up at Laborie on dd/mm/1986. Stephen was not yet four years old. We were immediately entranced by the place, which although basic and unsophisticated in almost every way, felt very welcoming and appealing. We told ourselves that we had been silly not to have come sooner, and resolved to return. We did so several times, and brought friends with us, notably David and Janet Harper, who also liked the place.

In 1988, Cyril dropped a bombshell. He said that he and his new wife Peggy had decided to sell Laborie. Whereas his first wife, Doreen, had been fond of the place, Peggy was not too keen on it. Peggy later told us that on one of the visits she had discovered a dead rat in the fireplace, the electrics had blown and the water supply had dried up. It wasn’t at all her idea of a holiday!

Sherry and I had put some money aside to have a loft extension done at 49 Defoe Road, but planning permission had been refused. We told David and Janet about the imminent sale of Laborie, and they encouraged us to consider buying it. I got in touch with Cyril and said we would make an offer, which delighted him. He said it would be as if the house were staying in the family, and once we had a agreed a fair price he said he would throw in all the furniture at no further charge. We had to borrow some of the money, which was lent to us by HS. On May 10th 1989 Laborie became ours.

Although we paid for the house, we also ‘inherited’ Cyril’s cordial relations with Mme Bel of the farm across the way, and also his friendship with Georges and Odette Bru, whom we made a point of seeing at their house in St Céré every time we visited.

Works

There was an awful lot of work to do! A first task was to ‘discover’ the garden which was mostly a huge bramble patch. We discovered that there were a number of plum trees, presumably planted by Cyril, which had been completely invaded by huge bramble thickets.

The first money we spent on the house went in having a window opened up in the bathroom. The work was done by M Pradayrol senior and Claude Bel.

We levelled the garden. We have a photo of Uncle Richard pusing the rototiller.

We built a patio below the tower room. This was done with the help of my mother and father who visited that summer.

We had a balcony built on the west side. This involved making what had been windows into doors. The balcony was built by M Pradayrol junior, and again the stonework was done by Claude Bel.

We built a concrete platform in the undercroft as a work area, and used some of the concrete to make a parking spot for my motorcycle.

We had the entire top part of the house re-done. New roof, insulation, and flooring in the grenier. This was done by Pradayrol.

After lenghty negotiations we managed to buy the little garden which had been used as a vegetable garden by Mme Bel (‘La Mamie’), and built a car parking space at the western end. I built the walls for this space.

We had the kitchen area re-designed and installed by M Gendrau of Bex Batiman.

Of course, there were many many other changes and improvments made through the years. We often wonder what Cyril would think if he could see it.