All four of their daughters – the last born since the move to France – have done well at local schools and are now thoroughly bilingual.The bed-and-breakfast business is thriving. Lovingly restored original features include vast granite fireplaces, spiral staircases, bare stone walls and beamed ceilings. Guests can potter among the castle’s rose gardens and croquet lawns, swim in its outdoor pool or fish for tench or carp in its moat.The Freelands concede that it has been hard work establishing a new life for themselves in France, but say that it has ultimately paid off. However, if you are patient and prepared to write a lot of letters, you usually end up getting what you want.”The castle keep is now home to three en-suite bedrooms, while an extra self-contained apartment sleeping up to five has been installed in the West Tower. The castle is constructed of heavy granite stones and, because of the narrow doorways and windows, we often had to hire cranes to move and replace chunks of masonry.”The bed-and-breakfast idea cropped up much later.

“About 12 years ago, we were approached by the regional tourist authority who suggested we might consider starting a B&B business and offered us a free listing in a new guide to French chateaux that was being launched,” Nicholas says.The Freelands decided to take them up on the offer, and applied for a number of grants to help with the restoration. French building regulations proved a nightmare, but their persistence paid off and the financial help arrived. “There’s a lot more bureaucracy in France than there is in England,” Philippa says, “and you have to learn to play the game. She designed pieces of chunky oak furniture with which to furnish the renovated rooms “Progress was painfully slow.

Restoration of other sections of the chateau evolved more slowly. When work on the East Tower was under way, Philippa turned her attention to the keep, the oldest part of the building “That was just a hobby at first,” she says. It was basic at first – sandblasting the walls and clearing the ivy – and it was only later that she enlisted the help of local builders to help with the heavier jobs.Initially, she concentrated on the East Tower, which gradually took shape as the five-bedroom family dwelling. But both of them saw the potential in the castle’s medieval splendour, with its arrow-slit windows, battlements, ramparts, drawbridge and moat.So, while Nicholas continued working, Philippa gave up her academic studies and started work on the restoration. “Our youngest daughter Lucy was only one-and-a-half when we first moved here, and literally lived out of a suitcase for the first few weeks,” remembers Philippa.

When Nicholas and Philippa Freeland sold their Cotswold farmhouse for £240,000 and bought a near-derelict French chateau for £160,000 16 years ago, they had no idea they would eventually be using it to run a successful bed-and-breakfast business

Back then, they were both in their early thirties. Because the building is Grade I-listed, the kitchen units have been hand-built as freestanding units in order to protect the plasterwork.Up one of the house’s two staircases, the reception room on the first floor looks on to a view of the 150 square foot south-facing walled garden. The house now has five reception rooms, six bedrooms and Phillipe Starck bathrooms. The period detail is exquisite, too, with intricate garlands of plasterwork and elaborate cornicing throughout, ornate ceiling roses and marble fireplaces.On the lower ground floor, there’s a study, family room and plant room, as well as a hallway leading to a Roman-style 36ft by 24ft swimming pool, complete with changing rooms, Doric columns and stone seats.A large dining room and kitchen occupy the whole of the ground floor.