Spring cleaning at the Château
Imagine a place where history intertwines with art, where every corner tells a story, and where the creative spirit reigns supreme. Welcome to Château de Sacy, an 18th-century manor located in Picardy, just 45 minutes from Paris. This isn’t just any château: passed down through generations of strong, independent women, it’s now a vibrant sanctuary for artists, a place where château life meets bohemian charm. Discover this unique place through the eyes of photographer and journalist Pauline Chatelan as she shares her unforgettable experience in this article.
It’s an early April morning at Gare du Nord. I hop on a train, headed to Pont-Sainte-Maxence, a small town in Picardie just 45 minutes away from Paris. The station, like in most rural areas in France, simply consists of a platform and a quiet parking lot where I’m waiting to be picked up. Murphy Williams, my hostess for the weekend, pulls over. Steering wheel on the right-hand side, Rolling Stones on the radio, her car has crossed the English Channel more times than most. British from her father’s side, she lives in Cornwall for most of the year, and makes the road trips in the spring and summer to stay at her French mother’s family home: Château de Sacy.
The 18th century manor has been passed through several generations of women down to Murphy’s mother, and the current owner, Hermine Demoriane. Singer, playwright, actress, tightrope walker… those are only some of the riveting lives she has led, so when she inherited the estate in 1994, she was not going to suddenly take on the role of lady of the manor without calling upon her world of arts and bohemia. Since then, well over fifty French and British artists have stayed in residence at Sacy, weaving new layers of fascination into the very fabric of the house.
We drive past endless fields of sugarbeets before reaching the gates of the property. Its mint green shutters stand open, letting in the morning sunlight as it hits the stone and red bricks of the facade. The windows overlook a vast lawn dotted with white and purple brush strokes of crocuses. Sprouting leaves and early blossoms herald that the house and its grounds are ready to come out of hibernation and to welcome a new season of visitors.
Both mother and daughter have been taking turns sprucing up the home with the help of friends and volunteers. On today’s task list: weeding the front path, collecting fallen branches, training roses, mowing the lawn “but be careful of marguerites”. Although there is much to get done, Murphy insists on setting up a breakfast table outside for the new arrivals, two young volunteers from Manchester and myself.
After enjoying pastries and coffee in the sun, our hostess shows me to her favourite room of the house, which I will have the honour to call mine for the duration of my stay. The bed is nestled in a curtained nook and sits beneath ceiling mirrors – remnants of past resident’s art installation. The adjacent bathroom is being repainted in a vivid coral pink to match the toile de jouy that covers the walls of the bedroom, the same pink as the quince blossom Murphy foraged in the garden to decorate all of the rooms. The Artist’s Way and George Sand’s La Petite Fadette reside on the bookshelves alongside a large collection of Connaissance des Arts, a French arts magazine which Hélène Demoriane, Murphy’s grandmother, contributed to as an arts correspondent in the 1960s. Inspired by her, Murphy would go on to become a journalist herself, writing for publications such as Vogue and GQ in London.
I spend the morning camera in hand, exploring and attempting to capture details of this unique place: straw hats hanging in the entrance, books about flowers on every floor, mantels adorned with female marble sculptures, Rococo features such as a Fragonard-style vignette in one of the bathrooms or the “shepherdesses’ heads” holding the shutters in place outside. In the kitchen, a sculpted cast iron plaque over the woodfire stove depicts nympheas mocking Hercules. It feels as though for centuries, a feminine spirit has been safeguarding this house. In some respects, time has stood still. The sitting room – with its textured wallpaper discreetly peeling in the corners, portraits of ancestors, and upright piano – could be the set of a period film. And as I wander through the tomette-tiled corridors, to the melody of someone playing Beethoven’s “Für Elise” on the untuned keys, I could have very well just stepped into one.
But over the last decades, the Château, for all its untouched charm, has hardly been dormant. Although I won’t have the chance to meet her this time around while she is away in London, every corner of the house echoes Hermine’s aura. Hand drawn flowers hung on the wall addressed to her. Decorative wooden doors embedded with cupids walking a tightrope. A flyer for “Musée-le-Petit”, an exhibition which she imagined a few years ago in collaboration with two artists to unveil hidden treasures from both the garden and the attic.
Art is ever-present at Sacy. Indeed, Hermine founded in 1996 the “Ateliers d’artistes de Sacy”, an organisation designed to allow other free spirits to find inspiration and to create original work at the estate. This is how Scarlett Vadepied, a multidisciplinary artist, was able to imagine and paint “Scènes Champêtres”, a series of grass-green canvases which re-interpret celebrated pictures; hung on all four sides of the billiard room, they have since become an integral part of the house. In the barn, Murphy points out a patch of ancient floorboards that had been cut out and replaced with a patch of grass from the garden as part of a conceptual artist’s project. The boards were then returned to their original place, almost unnoticed except for the scar in the wood – evidence of the artist’s ephemeral visit, and of the artistic potential of the house as more than a creative playground, but as an instrument for making art itself.
Someone vigorously rings the bell outside. Called to lunch, we all grab seats at a set table to break bread on the other side of the dwelling, facing the afternoon sun. I’m sat next to Charleigh and Leon, the “love birds” as Murphy will call them, who at only 19 just packed up their lives to travel indefinitely. All the way from Mexico, Krys is here as part of his first ever European trip. There is also Emma, a friend of Murphy’s from Cornwall, and Tom, who has been coming to Sacy for over ten years.
Amidst the conversations, Murphy enthusiastically recounts anecdotes about the house, and about Hermine. In her absence, she speaks of her and her eclectic life with great admiration. Who else, after all, looked up at their mother performing on the tightrope in front of crowds as a child? But beyond the artistic exploits of her past, what Murphy seems most proud of is her mother’s lifelong counter-cultural stance. It has guided her approach to Sacy, taking the legacy of her bourgeois family and turning it into a sanctuary for the arts; or growing a vegetable garden using organic and sustainable methods on a property surrounded by intensive agriculture, back when permaculture was still an obscure practice.
At 83, Hermine is still imagining ways to expand the creative potential of Sacy, including a future plan to turn the barn into a music recording studio and additional lodging for residencies. As artists have come and gone – borrowing elements of the property, and at times using Hermine herself as their subject – it is as though they have each contributed to her own ever-evolving work of art: the house. And like any author with a vision, she feels protective of it.
Today, she works together with her daughter to keep the house standing, and most importantly lived in. The last thing either of them wants is for it to sit empty, collect dust and become forgotten. Thankfully, Murphy is a born hostess. She loves to gather, share, and look after people, to which I can attest. Welcoming guests and volunteers at Sacy is in her eyes an opportunity to pick costumes out of her mother’s very large collection in the attic, and to throw lavish dress up parties in the garden by candlelight.
It’s in this spirit that she started hosting creative retreats a few summers ago. Collaborating with artists and creatives to teach intimate groups poetry, songwriting, silk canvas, yoga... The tutors like to teach outside, under the walnut trees of the English garden, and Murphy prepares every single meal herself, cooking exclusively fresh and flavourful Ottolenghi recipes. I feel overwhelmed by how effortlessly her generous spirit brings together our group, most of us strangers, in some magical synchronicity, and makes us all feel at home. “The house is rustic”, she admits, but what it lacks in hotel service, it certainly delivers as inspiration for anyone who embraces its bohemian spirit.
This is what has drawn Tom to return time and time again. A legal assistant in his 30s from England, his creative interests include poetry, music and photography. His many years of volunteering, helping with the house and gardens, have even made him a point of reference for both Hermine and Murphy who, without hesitation, turn to him if they can’t locate something. I ask him if things have changed since his first visit. He mentions some of the upgrades that have occurred, but overall feels protective of the house as it is and does not wish for it to lose its magic.
After a fleeting weekend of shared meals al fresco, gardening, brocante, bicycle rides, late night strolls under the stars, billiard games – the French kind – , and lake swimming, the time has come to say goodbye. I flip the pages of what used to be an accountant’s handwritten ledger in the 1950s and now serves as the Sacy guestbook, so that I can thank my hostess for the unforgettable stay. The last entry dates from the previous Summer. It is a poem inspired by the house which Tom wrote upon hearing the sounds of laughter and music coming up from the gardens to his attic room window. It’s entitled: “The Walnut Dances”.
Photos & text - Pauline Chatelan @paulinechatelan
Follow @chateaudesacy on Instagram, and to learn more about retreats, residencies and volunteering at Château de Sacy visit www.chateaudesacy.org
Upcoming in August: a wildly colourful introduction to the world of silk painting with artist Hilary Simon