Escape to the Chateau 2019: former civil servant swaps three-bedroom ex-council flat in London for 32-room French castle

How many dissatisfied Londoners dream of packing in the office job for a totally new life, full of travel and the opportunity to learn new skills?

Amy, a former civil servant, did just that, ending up restoring a 32-room French chateau via a stint as a writer in Montserrat, where she met Marc, the Frenchman who would become her husband.

A former penguin researcher, he was running a hydroponic lettuce farm on the volcanic Caribbean island.

The couple married and set up in a wooden house in the jungle – already a far cry from the three-bedroom ex-council flat Amy had lived in in Southfields while working in Whitehall.

Zika virus and political uncertainty – as well as an inheritance – brought the couple back to Europe in search of “a little house to retreat to”. However, they saw the chateau — and their fates were sealed.

Set in 130 acres of predominantly forested land, the Chateau de Rosières is in the Ardèche region of southeastern France. Amy and Marc say they fell in love with the property as soon as they were shown it and bought it for £770,000 in 2016.

“All of a sudden we could see our future, and a way of fulfilling all of our ambitions — some of which we didn’t even realise we had — whilst living in a gorgeous place,” they say.

The chateau dates back to the 14^th century or before, with additions and fortifications added to withstand the religious wars between Protestants and Catholics in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, when it was on the frontline.

“Under wallpapers we found royalist symbols and we have found documents, including 15^th-century manuscripts on animal skin, that told us of knights sent by the lord to ambush retreating Protestants,” say the couple.

The chateau was owned by the same family from the late 1700s until the 1970s, and remained largely untouched in that time.

Now Amy and Marc are starring in the latest series of Escape to the Chateau as they begin renovating the building, which is partially derelict.

They also need to undo the damage done by an unsympathetic Seventies renovation which removed many of the original features, including stone flooring in the entrance hall.

The previous owners bankrupted themselves and had to sell the chateau — a stark warning to Amy and Marc who aren’t yet making any money from the building as the renovations needed are so huge. They plan to turn it into a working farm with vineyards, run by Marc, and a yoga and wellbeing retreat with a café in the old coach house which will be open to the public.

The first project they plan to tackle is the master bedroom suite, which Amy and Marc hope to let for exclusive luxury weekends. The ancient metre-thick chateau walls mean it’s almost impossible to remodel the en suite bathroom, making it a real challenge to create a space luxurious enough for the couple’s plans.

The main chateau had only two functioning bathrooms when Amy and Marc moved in last year to oversee renovations, while most of the outbuildings and the top floor of the property were derelict.

The couple are also concerned to make the chateau as eco-friendly as possible, which adds to the costs with a huge woodchip heating system and a natural sewage system to install.

In order to keep costs down where possible, Amy and Marc are doing as much of the unskilled labour as they can themselves and have learned plastering, bricklaying and other traditional building techniques.

“On the surface the chateau looks like a semi-derelict building site but we have made huge progress in just a year and we’re really pleased with what has been achieved,” they say.

Escape to the Chateau: DIY is on Channel 4 at 4pm on weekdays. The new series of Escape to the Chateau starts on Sunday at 8pm on Channel 4.