“We looked at 10 other châteaux just to make sure it was the right one, and this was the one that stuck out”
When Michael Halpin and his partner Jonathan Cooke’s friends sent them a picture of a château that was for sale in the Loire Valley, they thought they were pulling their leg. “Our first reaction was ‘Are they joking?’” laughs Michael. “We really didn’t take it seriously to start with.”
But when the pair went to see Château de Jalesnes in Maine-et-Loire, they found that the 16th-century property looked as good as it did in the pictures. “It boasted all the traditional features you would expect to find in a French château,” Michael remembers. “It had a turret, a moat and it also offered over 2,000m2 of living space.”
Suddenly, the idea of buying a French château didn’t seem like such a far-off dream, and in November 2013, the couple bought the property, along with their Australian friends Jenny and David.
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