Limousin Manor houses

Manor houses are very luxurious and often fortified Limousin properties. These houses originally represented the lowest unit of territorial organisation in the feudal system.

The word Manoir is also used to describe large Limousin stone made farmhouses occupied by gentry, noble and later on, bourgeois people. These houses are made foremost of Granite.

Wood is used for the pieces of furniture, the chimney, the doors and beams are exposed in the house. There is even sometimes half-timbered walls inside the house, as part of the decoration.

Manor houses sometimes have a huge stone gate that is the entance to a large courtyard and garden with a path leading to the house. Roofs are foremost made of tiles and steeply pitched. The house normally has a minimum of two chimneys as well as towers (in fact being often ancient pigeonniers) that give it even more prestige and makes it look like a Chateau.

The manor house was an autonomous place where many different sorts of vegetables were produced. It was the big difference with chateaux, built for defence purposes only. Manor houses did not have a warfare goal.

Many manor houses were originally partially fortified. The primary feature of the manor house is its great hall. A late 16th century transformation produced many of the smaller current Renaissance châteaux of France.