Talking Location With … author Trevor Dolby – PROVENCE

22nd July 2022

#TalkingLocationWith… author Trevor Dolby, author of One Place de l’Eglise, A Year in Provence for the 21st Century.

In 2004 we bought a thousand year old house next to a church, in a small village between the mountains and the sea in the South of France.

One Place de l’Eglise was a wreck. Had we had thought about it we would have realized how mad we were. But it’s the crazy things that make the best stories. The roof leaked, the mortar in the ancient walls was crumbling, no heating, no plumbing no wiring… to speak of.

We had spent holidays in the Luberon in the early 1990s, unknowingly rubbing shoulders with Peter Mayle in out of the way bars and restaurants before he wrote his A Year in Provence. We steeped ourselves, as many people do, in the idea of doing the same. I watched and re-watched Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources, and imagined myself racing goats in Bonnieux.

Buying One Place de l’Eglise is one of those serendipity stories. One of those love at first sight stories. There was a mix up with the immoblier, a wrong photograph and a friend who loved a deal who made it happen. It’s a tale any novelist would have been proud of. One of those good stories that have enough space in them to sparkle every time.

Over the years we have progressively restored the house. A kitchen, a roof terrace, one bedroom, then the next. A process that has nurtured us, as much as it has bought the house back to life. It’s still far from finished. The outside walls are still crumbling. The stone around the medieval doorway to the cave is now so in need that it looks like it is melting. But the villagers who pass by each day are happy that One Place de l’Eglise has life in it again.

Our children grew up in One Place de l’Eglise. Every summer toasting on the roof terrace, swimming in the river Orb nearby, watching the bats pop out from the barns in the evenings, the setting sun fading to the twinkling cosmos. We got to slow down, to get to know each other, to enjoy making the shared moments that have given us our family shorthand.

The 11^th century church is just twenty or so meters from our front door. The bells chime the hours, but at 7am, midday, and 7pm they go mad to tell the villagers of old that it’s time to go to the fields, time for lunch and time to return home. One evening as the bells chimed I began to write.

I wrote about our family and about the house, about the funny things that happed to us, about the serious things that happened to us, about the scent of thyme and lavender, the warmth of sun on stone walls, nights hung with stars, silence in the hills, the importance of history and memory. I wrote about passions and people, the liberation of laughter, the solace it gave to loss, and the secrets of fig jam.

Houses are palimpsests. During its thousand years our French house has been home to many generations, hundreds of people living out their elaborate lives. All that remains of their stories is an echo, a ghost, here and there.

When the house becomes too much for us and we walk through the front door for the last time, we will leave a bottle or two of Picpoul, and a copy or two of One Place de l’Eglise.

Trevor Dolby

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