Creative Thinking

Renovating a 19th-century house in Charente proved all the more challenging on a very tight budget, yet David Carr and Lane Hunt have managed to achieve some very big changes, as Gillian Harvey finds out.

- Gillian Harvey

When David Carr first visited France, he soon fell in love with the country he now calls home. “I spent a wonderful week in Granville during which I discovered the food, the wine and fell in love with it all!” he says. “I saw myself living here one day.” The only problem? At the time David (now 48) was just seven years old and accompanying a classmate on a French exchange.

It was nearly 40 years later in 2015 that David was able to fulfil his ambition to move across the Channel, after he fell in love for a second time – this time with artist Lane Hunt. “I was working as a manager in the music industry when we met, and Lane was starting an interior design degree at Southampton university,” David explains. “The industry changed, and I decided to quit while I was ahead; so while Lane completed his studies I took advantage of an unusual opportunity – joining a French circus company and touring Normandy! It was great fun, and also renewed my love for the country.”

With Lane also keen to make the move to France and embrace a new way of life, when his degree finished in 2015 the couple started looking for a ‘forever home’, eventually settling on their 19th-century mansion house in the small town of Champagne-Mouton in Charente.

“I had a dream of living in the countryside, so because the mansion is in a small town I didn’t even want to view it at first!” says David. “But Lane was keen to look at the building – mainly due to the large hallway and staircase in the house, so I agreed to go along. As soon as we got out of the estate agent’s car in the courtyard, we knew. That was it. We cancelled all other viewings and here we are. It was love!”