The Cathars were a rather gloomy medieval religious bunch, who railed at the teaching and authority of the Catholic church. But like many a modern housebuyer, they understood the importance of location. They chose to live in the wild, romantic landscape of southern France, in what are now the
départements of the Aude and the Ariège. The Aude is more Mediterranean, with sparse vegetation and vines. The Ari ège is cooler, more hilly, with farms and large fields.
There are no Cathars left now, because their heresy upset the Pope so much that at the beginning of the 13th century, he launched the only crusade on European soil and had them wiped out. France was united, but the people of Cathar country went into a sulk that lasted until Ryanair decided to fly into Carcassonne, bringing in property buyers and a subsequent demand for artisans to do up the derelict properties they bought.
Carcassonne, along with Perpignan, is the gateway to Cathar country. Both cities have already enjoyed the “Ryanair effect”, which can double the price of houses in the vicinity within a couple of years. A good house with a number of bedrooms and a garden near either of these airports, with their year-round scheduled flights from the UK, will start from £100,000. However, once you move more than an hour or so away, property prices drop sharply.
According to Jeremy Campbell, who runs the property company Cathar Castles, it is possible to pick up a village house without a garden for less than £50,000 in most places in Cathar country. In some cases it will be possible to add a roof terrace, although not if the house is near a church or a protected monument. If you want a garden, you will have to pay another £20,000.
Campbell and his wife Petra came to the region seven years ago and bought a restored five-bedroom stone house with some land for £115,000. Campbell estimates that today it would be worth more than £300,000. “The price of bigger farmhouses with land has rocketed,” he says. “It is also difficult to find places to do up, such as an isolated barn on the edge of a village.”
The cheaper properties are to be found in southern Ariège, in places such as Foix, Tarascon-sur-Ariège and Ax-les-Thermes. Campbell recommends housebuyers look at the Plateau de Sault, which is between Quillan and Ax-les-Thermes. “It is quite remote, quite high, but stunning,” he says. “For lovers of countryside there is nowhere better, although you will get snow in winter and you probably won’t need to build a pool in the summer.”
The spiritual home of the Cathars is Montségur, a castle perched on a dizzying peak in the Ariège, where the last of their priests were roasted on a giant barbecue. It is a cold and windswept place, and in its shadow you can pick up a three-bedroom house for less than £70,000.
Montségur is famous as a supposed resting place of the Holy Grail. When the siege was finally ended and the castle and its inhabitants had agreed to surrender, they were allowed one last night to put their affairs in order. Four knights slipped away under cover of darkness, supposedly with a large chest of treasure. Did this contain the Holy Grail? And what was the Holy Grail anyway? Some claim it was the chalice Christ used at the last supper, but perhaps it was the documentary proof that Jesus had married Mary Magdalene, and produced children? And that these children came to live in Cathar country — at least that’s the premise of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, the runaway bestseller that jumbles all manner of religious conspiracy theories and is now being made into a film starring Audrey Tautou and Tom Hanks.
The land here rises from the plains to the south and the Mediterranean Sea and forms a series of mountains. Once you get up to more than 1,000 metres, the air is cool. In winter there is often snow, but the summers are long and warm. There are many miles of vineyard, then farmland and trees. And of course, if you believe the Da Vinci Code version of history, there is one added attraction: your next-door neighbour could be one of Jesus’s descendants.
“It’s amazing how many Brits want to live in Cathar country,” says Judith Fear. She moved more than a year ago to Puilaurens, a small village at the foot of Puilaurens Castle. There are five so-called Cathar castles, also known as the “sons of Carcassonne”, which became heretic strongholds, and were later enlarged by the French crown as a defence against Spain. They are all remote and perched on vertigo-inducing mountain tops, with spectacular views across the countryside. The most stunning of these is Peyrepertuse.
Fear moved to the region because of an interest in the Holy Grail. So do her neighbours look like Christ? “More like the anti-Christ,” she says.
She bought a three-bedroom terraced house in Puilaurens for £45,000. Eighteen months later she sold it for £65,000. She has now bought a place near Lézignan-Corbières, which is close to the Canal du Midi. “It is a stone house, with four bedrooms, for which I paid £100,000. I don’t know if I will stay there or not. But it’s nice to be near the canal.”
Another Brit was so inspired by this Holy Grail fever that he gave up a secure job with David Lloyd Leisure and relocated to Cathar country. Alistair Norman bought a four-bedroom house in Puilaurens for £52,000 three years ago. It has a terrace which gives fantastic views over the mountains. Norman has set up a company, Pyrenees Adventures, that will organise a series of tours around the region for people who want to discover the history of the place, including the Cathars and the Holy Grail.
But the real Holy Grail for British property buyers is a stone-built house in need of renovation. “All British property buyers seem to want the same thing,” says Fear, who is setting up a property consultancy in the region. “A stone house with some land for less than £100,000. The good news is that it is still available in this part of the Languedoc. If you are quick.”
Andy and Mary Robinson, both in their 50s, took early retirement from the teaching profession in the north of England. They spent more than two years driving around Cathar country and looked at more than 90 properties before settling on a small village near Rennes-le-Château. They bought the two-bedroom house for £44,000 nine months ago.
“We love it,” says Andy. “The villagers are very friendly, although we are finding it is quite hard to understand what they are saying. This is a wine-growing country, so we drink wine now instead of Newcastle Brown Ale. The food is good and it’s often sunny, but quite windy. There are lots of flights home if we want to go back, either from Perpignan, Carcassonne or Toulouse, but to be honest, we are having too good a time here.”
They might find their idyll disturbed soon, though. Rennes-le-Château is a small attractive village, where in the 19th century the local priest, Berengar Saunière, was found to be spending lavishly on himself and rebuilding the village church. How was he financing this, villagers wondered? Had he found the treasure of the Knights Templar? Abbé Saunière was interrogated by his local bishop and sacked. Only after an appeal to Rome was he reinstated, but he died penniless. His deathbed confession was said to be shocking: he revealed evidence that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had escaped Jerusalem after the crucifixion and set up home in the Corbière mountains of Cathar country. Dan Brown’s next book will take Saunière’s alleged revelations as its basis and Rennes-le-Château as its setting. So property grail hunters had better get in quick, before the book-toting hordes descend.
Pyrenees Adventures, 0870 190 4125, www.pyradv.com; Judith Fear, 00 33 468 324 337
What's on the market
In Murviel-les-Béziers, near Béziers, two four-bed houses, each with a pool, are for sale with 44 acres and a 1976 Rolls-Royce for £1.2m with Lotthé-Marshall/Savills, 00 33 466 771 449, www.lotthemarshall.com
A nine-bed house on a 25-acre estate near Carbonne, a 45-minute drive from Toulouse, has a pool, gîte and stables. It is £685,000 with Francophiles, 01622 688 165, www.francophiles.co.uk
Near Auterive, 30 minutes from Toulouse in the Haute-Garonne, this three-bed farmhouse with a pigeon loft is for sale for £253,000 with Cathar Castles, 00 33 468 693 561, www.catharcastles.com
In the hills above Moulis, just west of Foix, this two-room house set in 1.2 acres is habitable but needs complete refurbishment. It is £26,000 with Arieg’ Immo, 00 33 534 140 136, www.ariegimmo.com
