private mansions for sale Ille-et-Vilaine, France

A 19th century ship-owner’s manor house with walled grounds, near Saint-Malo, close to the beaches and shops in Saint-Servan. The house stands at a crossroads of several streets. The main entrance, slightly set back from the street, is via an imposing wooden gate with a curved top, framed by granite pillars flanked with guard stones, opening into an inner courtyard. The garden is tucked away behind high stone walls that enclose the rear of the property. It originally had a larger garden. The house, which has remained in the same family since its construction, was built at the beginning of the 18th century for a seafaring family of the Compagnie des Indes, with links to Isle de France, now known as Mauritius. The south-facing edifice has three storeys one of which is in the attic space. The main façade has three vertical rows of openings. The elevations are made of rough-hewn blocks of granite, while the window and door frames are made of dressed granite blocks. The slate hipped roof has three dormer windows topped with pediments and is flanked at each end by two tall chimney stacks, while two smaller chimney stacks stand in the centre. The roof guttering is inserted in a wooden cornice. To the rear, a semi-circular conservatory is topped by a slate roof. To the southeast, at a right angle to the main building and standing against a neighbouring edifice, there is a brick and rubble stone outbuilding topped with a slate roof. Part of it is used for storage and another part has been converted into living space.

A 390-m² private mansion with 1,300 m² of grounds, in the middle of the Breton city of Rennes, near the Thabor gardens. From the street, a wrought-iron gate, flanked on either side by a caretaker’s cottage, opens onto a cobblestone courtyard where up to three vehicles can be parked. A tall stone wall borders the property, while on the south side, the residence overlooks grounds of nearly 1,000 m². The private mansion, built around 1830, was initially part of a larger housing estate, with more than 20 residences planned. However, it was never completed in full and resulted in the construction of only six private mansions. Built out of rubble stone schist masonry masked by light-coloured plaster and topped with a hipped slate roof, the house has nearly 400 m² of inhabitable space distributed over a raised ground floor above a garden level as well as an upper floor and converted attic space. Its street-side façade displays five vertical rows of windows and its roof contains six skylights, while on the garden side, three slate shed dormer windows provide natural light for the top floor. Tall red brick chimneys topped with chimney pots are located on each gable end, while a third red brick chimney is located on a section of the roof ridge. On the ground floor on the courtyard side and the first floor on the garden side, tall windows are topped with arched fanlights, as is the front door on the courtyard side, this time decorated with ironwork. Stringcourses, cornices and moulded window and door surrounds cadence the façade, while upstairs, the large-paned windows are safeguarded by wrought-iron guardrails.