Encompassing both northern Europe and the Mediterranean world, France is a country of contrasts - and these contrasts are nowhere more evident than in its farmhouses and cottages.
This book traces the diverse and attractive rural architectural idiom through every region of the country: From the great courtyard farms of the North East, the flamboyantly half timbered houses of the Alsace, the Lauze-roofed chalets of Savoy, the extended and terracotta tiled farmsteads of Provence, the thatched farm houses of Normandy with flowering ridges and the stone longhouses and cottages of Brittany.
All of these buildings, so magnificently designed to fit their exact environmental niche, are deeply inbued with a sense of place and belonging - and as such are increasingly seen as a link from the present back into France's rural past.
