Absolutely old as the hills

We're always trying to date our house. Yes, we love this place...not ahem that kind of date. Although, ... we might as well be dating it because often we seem to worry more about it than we do about each other... (shameless renovators whine)

So, what I mean is like stamping a date on the constuction of this pile of rubble. You know, circa, B.C.- somethin'- somethin'. Hey, we're pretty sure mastodons were around when the first stone was laid. We remembered seeing some unidentifiable hides in the attic.



We started out pretty clueless about the date. "It's ummm ...reeeeeal old looking" was what we were inclined to say. Then we found some postcards from a time when "ladies wore long black dresses and little boys wore funny sailor suits" That seemed to us to be about 1900. The house looks old in the photo. Really old.

Then we started noticing that some of the neighbors had signs on their doors. Some even carved in wood and fixed permanently to the uh, door. Yeah, gotta get one of those soon, um right. A house for sale on our street actually had 1563 burnished into a cheesy plaque which hung over the door. It's since been discreetly removed by the yuppies who are now renovating the place. Our next door neighbor has one of these signs carved into her door. It brandishes 1653 as her houses birthday. We thought she was just trying to lure tourists to rent her apartments. Turns out damned if she ain't telling the truth with her fancy, little woodcarving. We did some passive investigating. (you can tell we're really dedicated to finding the answers, huh?)

I have a very boisterous, 86 year old American friend who lives around the corner from me. He's sort of a collectioner of lots of things. He has alot of interesting stuff in his house...you know , everywhere. Okay, okay I'll just say very nicely that he's a hoarder of bric-a-brac, nick nacks and well ...junk. He does have a few treasures in his junk though. One treasure is a copy of map of the area in the 16th century drawn by a famous French cartographer. If you squint real hard you can see a village. And, if this map is accurate you can see a street (ours), with a house where ours currently is. It's unmistakably our street. The chateau is sitting just at the end of the street just as it sits today. The picture above shows the area close up. See! Look there. You can see a very old version of us making trips to the dump with our horse and wagon.




When we bought this house the vieille madame who sold it to us said that her family always claimed that our house was the oldest on the street. At the time we were still thinking along the lines of the house being 100 years old. To us that seemed like an ancient house.

And yet, the house may be celebrating her 500 year birthday. Now that's some old dust!