While the house was evidently intended for well-to-do living, history seems to have had other ideas, for there are many telltale signs – unplastered chimney breasts, hearths where no fire was ever lit, rudimentary flooring – that suggest the building was never completed in its intended state. In an era ravaged by the terrible wars of religion, many families found themselves on the wrong side of the divide: following the siege of La Rochelle, in 1627–28, countless Protestants in the area were stripped of their titles and properties. No doubt the Bâtiment suffered the same fall from grace as its first owners. What is certain is that afterwards it came into the possession of a Catholic family, who turned it into a farmstead: over the next three centuries, tenant farmers came and went, until 1983 when the last one quit the holding. 

When Christie discovered the house, in 1985, it had been completely abandoned. Of its many rooms, only two had been used for human habitation, all the others serving either as agricultural storage or for sheltering livestock. What is now the library was a hayloft, the drawing room a kennel for the farm’s dogs, and the red gallery served as a cowshed. But for Christie it was love at first sight. 

“When I visited the house for the very first time, I realized it was exactly what I’d been looking for. I didn’t want a house in perfect shape, but rather a place that was rich in possibilities.” 

After acquiring the Bâtiment, Christie set to work restoring the house. Taking the same approach as he would towards a baroque score, everything he did aimed to respect the language of the seventeenth century. As well as seeking expert advice and reading widely on the subject of the architecture and decorative arts of the period, he spent many hours simply observing his new treasure. For the Bâtiment’s long slumber had protected it from the meddling hands of modernization, leaving intact many period features that have disappeared from other houses in the region – the room proportions, the layout, the door and window frames, and of course the fireplaces and chimney breasts. 

Once the fabric had been consolidated, Christie set about decorating the house – a process that lasted thirty years. For while he has achieved fame as a musician, Christie is also a passionate student of architecture and art history, interests that he first began exploring at Harvard. It was thus as a collector and connoisseur that he set about transforming the Bâtiment. Thanks to the painstaking work of skilled craftsmen, the beams and ceilings were adorned in vibrant colors, while the rooms slowly filled with furniture, pictures, books and objets d’art that Christie tracked down over the years – when, that is, he wasn’t working on transforming the grounds into a series of idyllic gardens. So it was that the Bâtiment began a whole new life.