After last week’s post on the doors to be found at the house of George Sand, we now turn to some of the doors in the village of Nohant, in whose centre that mansion is to be found. In putting together this post, it struck me that the further away you find yourself from the big house the tattier the doors become.

Thus, right opposite the gates of the house is the village church, with this neat little side door:

And on the other side of the church is this well-kept front door:

The sign over the door is interesting, not to say intriguing when you look at it in close-up:

The date is 1888, ‘siège sociale‘ means headquarters and Berry is what the region was called before the country was organised into départements. The article on the right looks suspiciously like a set of bagpipes and the one on the left could be some kind of accordion, but it’s the word ‘gâs’ that’s got me stumped. It’s obviously plural (because it goes with ‘les‘), but I can’t find ‘gâ‘ in any dictionary, although ‘gas‘ (singular) is translated as ‘lad’ or ‘guy’. Perhaps it’s a patois word.

On the opposite side of what, for want of a better expression, you could call the village green, is this house which is clearly in good decorative order, as an estate agent might put it:

After that, though, things start to get a bit rough around the edges, as in this rusty gate:

And by the time we reach the edge of the village, things are much more typical of what you would expect to find in rural France:

Thursday Doors 13 October 2016