A few days ago, when I started looking for and processing photos of houses that I took in Normandy in the early years of this century (doesn't that sound funny?), I didn't realize how many I would find. I ended up with 42 images. That made a fairly long slide show, so I divided them into three 14-image shows. I'm always surprised by the good quality of images produced by digital cameras so long ago.
All these are houses in Lower Normandy, which is the western part of the province or region. (You might call some "buildings" because they have shops, restaurants, or cafés on the ground floor, but that's not unusual for houses in France.) If I started looking for photos of houses in Upper Normandy (la Haute Normandie) I'd find so many more, because I've spent so much more time there over the years. I lived and worked for a year in that area's capital city, Rouen, back in the 1970s.
What is the French term for these timber framed, or fachwerk houses? They are so interesting.
ReplyDeleteThey are called by two names: maisons à colombages or maisons à pans de bois. The term colombage is said to be related to English "column". Pan de bois means "timber framing" according to dictionaries. French pan is related to English "panel."
DeleteI'd like to know the French word for half-timbered houses as well. Thanks for posting this, I enjoyed it. I notice that the French often paint their shutters white. I wonder if this is because they're viewed as functional parts of the hosue, to open and close, rather than decorative as in the States? (where often they are just nailed on for looks) Or maybe white is just popular?
ReplyDeleteI think white reflects heat better than other colors and white shutters keep the interior of the house cooler when the sun is beating down. We replaced the old dark brown sheet-metal shutters on the west side (the back wall) of our house with white aluminum shutters this past winter. We'll see how they perform when (and if) the weather ever gets hot this summer (I'm losing hope...).
DeleteDid you notice that in the photo Le Bar St Julien the colombages are false. Parts of them are chipped away, which could not be if they were wood!
ReplyDeleteI guess I was wrong. I enlarged the photo and looked at it withh a magnifying glass. It looks like the beams are really wood. It is strange, though.
DeleteI guess it's possible that the timbers were just slightly gouged out and the enduit was spread into the gouges during restoration work to cover and protect the wood. The photo before that one shows the building from farther away. I don't even know off-hand what town it is in. I'll figure that out and see what some research might reveal.
DeleteMy mistake, it wasn't le Bar but le Bistrot and that is in Domfront.
DeleteMy impression is that the house called Le Bistrot Saint-Julien is authentic, but I'm not finding a lot of historical details. It's featured prominently in two Domfront tourist brochures, here and here.
DeleteLoving these houses!
ReplyDeleteI'm enjoying these Normandy houses. I've spent some time on the coast north and east of Caen but not in the western part of Calvados, and those houses seem to be of darker stone. Intriguing to see what local differences there are in style and materials.
ReplyDeleteI thought colombage was the term for half-timbered houses. Or maybe columbage.