Our home in the Cévennes sun
Written by Peggy Anderson
ISBN: 978-1-901253-22-1
138 pages, paperback, 146mm x 208mm.
Published by Leonie Press, March 2001.
Price: £ 7.99 Postage and Packing: £ 1.15
and edited by Jan Bevan
10 B&W Photos, 6 Colour Photos
Yet by the time the couple came to retire they had transformed the ruin into an enchanting home. A local newspaper article described them as being set for a life of lilac and roses. This delightful and unusual book, describing that transformation, was written in 1975 and has been edited by Peggy’s daughter Jan Bevan as a tribute to her mother.
Jan now lets out half the house as a summer holiday gîte and lives in the other part.
Peggy Anderson was part of the generation who lost out heavily in their youth because of WWII. Born in 1920, at college when the war started and a young mother by the time it ended, she had wanted to be a fashion designer, but had plumped for the "safer option" of teaching in those uncertain times. She always maintained (according to daughter, Jan Bevan) that, had she had a different career, there would not have been the time to do what she did with the house in France. School holidays permitted two visits a year at Easter and in Summer to work on La Clède, so Peggy and husband, Alan, either froze in April or roasted in August! Since Jan has been involved, with her partner, Mike, in the refurbishment of the older side of the house at about the same age she says she’s amazed they managed it!
Jan's working life has been rather more chequered than her parents', initially "climbing the ladder" in press and public relations, travelling, then opting for a career change as an interior designer/decorator, following a course at Chelsea Art School. After her parents' deaths, she moved from London to Canterbury, where she met her partner, Mike, who first visited Ribes in 1995 to repair the roof. "Thankfully", says Jan, "he loved it too and, since then, we’ve been spending summers in France and winters in England".
As it is now over 40 years since the family bought Le Clède Jan has brought the story up-to-date in her book "Keeping the Dream Alive" published in March 2005.
