7 October 2002

The House in Senlis

Whenever I travel around France people ask, “Where do you live?”.  It’s best just to say, “north of Paris” because if people know we live in Senlis they think we are rich.  Senlis is known for having big houses.  So please come along with  me for a little tour of our house because lots of people have asked me what the darn thing looks like.

Rue de Republique is the main street through the town of Senlis where about 14,000 live and work.  Our house is situated on the edge of the downtown on this busy route.  According to our landlord, during World War II our house was shot at by the Germans.  Before that the Germans burned down the 300-year-old farmhouse that stood in this spot.  Then the army moved on down the street to murder the mayor.

Our house actually sits on the corner of rue de la Jardiner (the street of gardners) and rue de la Republique.  The thick gray sandstone walls of the house help to deaden the noise of the traffic.

Even though the house is three stories high, it isn’t really that big.  From the outside it looks huge.  I think the lovely stone arches the curve to make the porch entrance, and the large windows with balconies that face the street make the house seem much larger then it is.

Once you enter the dark green 10 foot high iron gate from the street the first thing you see is what we lovingly refer to as the sun porch.  We have a wicker couch and coffee table plus some deck chairs, plant trays and a wicker stand for holding shoes in this entrance way.  The floor is very art deco with its gray and white checked pattern floor.

The porch doesn’t get much sun, but it serves as protection for the front doors, and gives us a pleasant place to sit and look out into the garden.  Our view includes the 12 foot rock wall surrounding the “garden”.  At the far end of the garden is a double door that opens out onto the street to allow us to pull the car inside.  Our little car barely clears the walls of the gate.

The flooring on the first floor and four flights of stairs is chestnut.  Chestnut trees are plentiful here.  

The hallway on the main floor and kitchen have intricate tile designs on the floor.  Each room has a small marble fireplace for burning coal.

The ground floor has Jay’s office, but it has served as a dining room to the past tenants.  There is also the living room and an eat in kitchen.

There are six bedrooms in this house;  three on the second floor and three on the third floor.  We use the smallest bedroom for a closet, as there are no closets in the whole house.  The hallways on both floors are wide enough to fit a single bed.

One bedroom serves as my office with an extra bed for guests.  One is an activity room for all of the arts and crafts stuff Cat and I like to do.  Another room is a guest room.

There are two rooms on each floor for the bathroom.  One room is called the WC (water closet) for the toilet, and one room contains a bathtub big enough to swim in, a sink and a bidet.  Bidets are something I can never figure out, but apparently the French understand them.

In the basement under the living room are three, two-foot square indentations in the wall  Apparently these indentations go back several hundred years when the Romans controlled this area.  The indentations would have held lamps to light the passageway the French refer to as “The Cave”.  Throughout Senlis, Campaigne, Chantilly and all the way to Paris there are archways that made up a road system in those days.  Over time they became underground and created this “Cave” as they call it today. 

Gas from a big old-fashioned unit in the basement heats the water for bathing and the radiator system.   Each room, including the sun porch has a large cast iron radiator, which keeps the house toasty.  In the summer we turn the switch for the furnace to the mysterious middle position, so all we have then is hot water for bathing.  In the spring we had trouble getting the setting just right so that we had hot water for showers.  Sometimes we didn’t have any hot water at all.

Don’t get too envious of us living in this house.  It isn’t fancy or particularly pretty.  We were lucky to find something that was small enough that we could actually “live” in it.  And the best part of the whole thing is that we can walk to wherever we want to go.