ANOTHER VOICE

On coming to an old house as both restorer and destroyer

MATTHEW PARRIS

From the top of the cliff, as the track turned a corner, we could see the whole Mediterranean coast of northern Catalonia — all the lights of the towns — up to the French border where the Pyrenees topple into the sea. It was midnight, cold and clear with a yellow moon rising. Across the valley the summits of the Montseny mountains, dusted in an April snowfall, shone in the starlight. We paused to look, then drove on. L'Avenc would be just round the next bend.

L'Avenc. An odd name, not Spanish at all, not quite Catalan and, pronounced la venk, not really French either. Apparently it comes from the langue d'oc of southern France, and could mean 'crevasse' or 'big hole'.

But this L'Avenc is a house, and, for an Occitaine family, on the wrong side of the Pyrenees. The high ridge and rocky peaks of that great wall, shutting out France, Poke above the hills behind.

And, for a fine house, L'Avenc is in the wrong terrain. Its three storeys, immense arched door, decorated stone mullions and family crest carved into the lintels look out over a beautiful but desolate land; a gorsy, rocky plateau whose soil is thin. A thou- sand-foot cliff falls away from a bare edge just 200 yards from L'Avenc's door. You cannot farm such land. The two nearest settlements lie miles away along the cliffs' edge: Rupit in one direction, Tavertet in the other, Catalan stone villages whose tightly clustered houses were built for arti- sans and peasant farmers. The prosperous Mediterranean coast is 60 miles away, and so is Barcelona. What would a wealthy fam- ily be doing here, cut off from their coun- try?

This was the question which I asked myself when, ten years ago, I first rounded that bend to see L'Avenc standing tall, Proud and abandoned in the cold sunlight of a windy spring day. I was exploring the path and had no idea there would be a house in such a place — and such a fine house! Above one window was a family crest — it looked like a single thread, weav- ing between strings — and a date, IHS Maria, 1559. I managed to squeeze in past a broken door.

It was clear that half the house was even older. The new part, finished presumably in 1559, was the first stage of an operation designed to rebuild on ancient foundations. Lines of stone teeth jutted from its rear walls, ready to key into rooms which had never been built. The older back half had delicate stone arches of Gothic design and a sort of minstrels' gallery, in wood, above its hall, beneath which a great but crude fireplace was surrounded by stone flags and wood benches.

This felt mediaeval. The new part was refined, its stone doorways carved with intricate designs, and the mitred head of a bishop, cut into a wall above a stone wash- ing basin. The rooms were enormous. Who had lived here? The place looked long abandoned, but cattle had been quartered recently in the downstairs rooms. People had camped and built fires, but the interior was more or less intact.

Not for much longer, I thought. The floors and stairs were rotting and in places fallen through. The terracotta-tiled roof was leaking. The ridge support to the roof — a single great wooden beam — had cracked. Someone had jammed a vertical pole under it for support, but rested it only on the rotten wooden floor beneath. When this went, the roof would fall. I gave it a few years more.

And returned, whenever I was in Catalo- nia. I don't know why, really: to pay my respects to the place, perhaps. It cast a spell on all of us who saw it, standing so fine and sad and solitary, facing the end. Would nobody buy and save L'Avenc? All my fami- ly, who live not far away, thought the same. My sister Belinda made some enquiries, vis- ited museums, talked to historians.

She found that the house is well known locally. The oldest part can be dated by document back to at least the 14th century, but is probably older. Bishop Galzeron Sacorta, active in the 1320s, was born there. L'Avenc is built, apparently, in the manner employed by cathedral masons; the stonework is far finer than any to be seen elsewhere in this part of Catalonia, and is similar to fortress-houses in Occitania. The best explanation historians can offer is that the house was founded by wealthy Cathar refugees (many of whom were in the weav- ing trade), escaping the persecution of the Albigensian heresy in France. They sought isolation.

L'Avenc is one of just a handful of great houses which survived a huge earthquake in 1428, and another at the beginning of the 17th century. Much later L'Avenc fell into disrepair and was finally abandoned earlier this century.

Now my sister and I are buying L'Avenc. A local builder, Senor Sarsanedas, had acquired the house, hoping to raise the funds to rescue it from ruin, but has despaired of the attempt. He will sell it to us with its land for 40 million pesetas — a little less than £160,000. We shall need twice that, over as many years as it takes us to raise it, to restore the house; but the urgent task is to renew the roof; we hope to do so before next winter.

With two friends, I slept there last week. Superstitious, perhaps, to say so, but I wanted to make L'Avenc's acquaintance properly before deciding to buy. Sleeping in a place makes a tie which cannot be made in any other way. So we drove into the night with a bottle of wine, some sleep- ing bags, our boxer dog Tana, candles and enough wood for a fire.

We forgot matches. We spent an hour trying to light newspaper from a hired car's cigarette lighter (you can't), then stumbled with our bedclothes up to the top floor. A bat flitted out. The wind hissed in the rafters but there was never a creak all night. We drank the wine and turned in. It was very cold, below freezing.

We were not afraid. L'Avenc has a solid, sheltering feel; nothing bad. All slept well, and when my mother arrived with coffee and warm bread from the village, and matches, the dawn had crept past the boarded-up windows, bathing each floor with soft, dim light. We made a fire and sat talking, the youngest nephews and nieces playing at being scared.

But the moment of loneliness had passed. I had woken once in the night and stood for a while by a small window. Out- side was moonlight and within I could just discern the outlines of the room, and see the chinks in the roof, and hear the wind. A ruin is lovely in itself. When you restore a ruin something dies. All these years, L'Avenc has had herself to herself, and we had come not only as rebuilders but, in a way, as destroyers of her solitude and ruination. Strange to report, but, with the others asleep, I experienced that moment in the still of the night as saying goodbye.

Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter and a columnist of the Times.