In the family for 50 years, the castle and the inn of Monteton are ready to change hands. Meeting with Fanchon Feramus, who was born there and wants to take over the project. A music studio is installed there, young people came there for Rock and Comics courses, Noir Désir recorded an album there (before the Marie Trintignant murder affair)... it is not the Star Academy castle whose it is, but indeed the castle of Monteton, in the Lot-et-Garonne. Fifty years ago, it was taken over by two couples of friends. Today one of the girls, Fanchon Feramus, wants to continue their crazy project.
![]() “I was born and grew up here,” says Fanchon, at one of the tables in the castle inn. In August 2023, she hopes to buy it back. In 1974, her parents, Patrick and Jacqueline Feramus-Babel, as well as Yves and Renata Dijol-Zamparo were executives and wanted to give up everything. When they bought it, four of them, the castle had probably been uninhabited for two centuries. It's a beautiful ruin. “They cleared the land, and little by little, they made it a place to live,” explains Fanchon. Today, half a century later, they are over 70 years old, and ready to hand over the reins. We could sell to developers or a large hotel group, and let our old days slide, but we want to pass on, and show that this place and its economy are possible.
Patrick Feramus “We avoided selling it, so that this economy could continue. It’s a precarious place, but very rich because of the people who pass through,” adds the founder. “The château has lived in cycles, without really any down period,” explains Fanchon. Quickly, the inn became a table d’hôte. First of all, she has personal development courses. “We welcomed retreats for large groups, but also people who questioned their work. Often, they had given everything and reached a saturation threshold,” says Patrick Feramus. These people had “a desire to recreate a link with a place, even a ruin. It was a somewhat modern monastery.
“We were taken for a sect, for hippies” remembers Patrick Feramus. Ahead of their time, perhaps, personal development was viewed with apprehension. Vegetarian or yoga courses followed.
Then the castle became a mecca for music. In the 1980s, residencies for artists and music groups began. “It was a substantial development of activity at the time,” continues Fanchon. Then around ten years focused on young people, with youth and sport approval. “Each couple had four children. We all grew up together, but in two very separate families. For 10 years, there were stays for young people aged 13 to 17, notably Rock and Comics with Vacances Musicales Sans Frontières (VMSF). » At this time, part of the castle was brought into conformity. These stays ended in 1999. And then comes the return to the artists’ residence, the passage of many groups, notably Noir Désir. “When I passed my baccalaureate, they recorded an album at home,” remembers Fanchon. At the beginning of the century, many weddings were celebrated on the estate, which required a lot of energy from the owners. Then comes the music as the master of the place: courses in jazz, choir, Argentine tango, but also go players. The London jazz school, the International Jazz Summer School, has brought in 70 people since 2003.
After leaving for several years, and having set up a few businesses, Fanchon Feramus wants to take over. “I always knew I would come back, since I was a kid I wanted to take over.” The other children headed towards often artistic careers, like Manu, his brother. Drummer, used to touring, he currently rents part of the castle where he has set up his recording studio.
Returning two years ago, Fanchon Feramus continued in the tradition of the two couples. “I want to allow them to take their foot off the gas. Continue to live here, and enjoy, but without the worries of exploitation. They have spent their lives here, it must continue as peacefully as possible.” And she is full of ideas for business development. But to do this, she needs to “get one foot in the game,” she explains. First by buying shares in the SARL, the operating company, then in the SCI, owner of the premises. And to develop the activity decently, it will above all be necessary to bring the castle up to standard. “This castle lives thanks to good will, but everything is made of odds and ends” underlines Fanchon with a laugh, “Our parents did everything, little by little, with the means at hand”. Some parts are not accessible because they are too dangerous. Others are not well insulated. Or the water takes a very long time to heat up in some bathrooms. "I want to bring it into line, and well," she underlines. That is to say by highlighting the historical heritage of the castle. Part of the foundations date from the 12th century. There is typical Romanesque art from the same period as the village church. “But all this has a cost…
By taking over the activity of the castle, Fanchon Feramus hopes to “sustain and develop the activity”, and “bring the building up to standard”. But above all, he needs a financial contribution in order to buy shares "from the old ones" and to go to the banks. "If I already have a little cash, it will serve as leverage with banks to obtain loans." It is difficult to quantify the expected kitty. A few tens of thousands of euros, at least. “I expect everything and nothing with this kitty, failure is not trying. I believe in the project, and I will contact those who have passed through the château over the past 50 years.”
https://www.leetchi.com/fr/c/chateau-de-montetonsuite-2040593 | ||
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![]() ![]() My hotel in Bordeaux was very easy go get to from the airport, and the people at the reception desk were pleasant. I had arrived before check-in time, but my room was ready, and they had no objection to my going in and resting for a while. Although I was exhausted, after resting for a while, I went out and spent a very pleasant day in Bordeaux, which is an impressive city, full of grand eighteenth century buildings, next to a very wide river, but with a historic center small enough to walk around easily. Since it was Sunday in the holiday season, there were very few people in the streets. As promised, my suitcase was brought to the hotel in the late afternoon. The people at the hotel said it happened all the time. On Monday morning I packed and then took the long walk from my hotel to the railroad station, because I love wandering around towns, and bought a ticket for the 13:35 train to Bergerac. I slowly made my way back to the hotel and checked out at about eleven. There is a tramway that goes directly from where my hotel was, a big park with the strange name of Quinconces, to the railroad station. I have since discovered that "quinconce" refers to an arrangement like the five on a die or a domino: a square with four dots in the corners and one in the center, which is the way the trees are planted in that park. I had a cup of coffee, got on the tram, and had time to eat a salade niçoise in a decent restaurant across form the station (and to have my first of many glasses of red wine) before my train left. The train to Bergerac goes through wine ![]() We hung around and chatted, about twenty of us, in a pleasant area between a dilapidated stone tower, a terrace with tables set up for dinner, and a low, nondescript building. After a while, some people gathered at the bandstand and started jamming. There was a British bass player named Rick, with a thatch of graying blond hair, and a drummer. Christophe sat down at the keyboard, and I took out my alto. What the hell, I said to myself, why be bashful? After all, I had paid the airfare and tuition to play. I can't remember what tunes we played, but we hit it off fairly well. Other people took out their horns, and we kept going for quite a while. When you think about it, which I have done a lot, it's rather amazing that people who have never met can start making music almost immediately. ![]() Look how far I've gotten, and I've barely begun to describe the musical activities. Dorian sent us a .pdf file before the school began, with the schedule, which I printed out and looked at, but it didn't really mean much to me. On Tuesday morning we started off in earnest, and I began to see how much care had been put into planning things. We were placed in two different groups, which met at different times, of course. One was known as a workshop group – each one had about a quarter of the forty participants, selected by instrument. My group, in memory of the confusion of the first evening, was known as the Bed-Hunters. (Another group was known as the Jazz Worriers – to give you an idea of the humor of the place.) Each workshop group met for two hours or so every morning and prepared a piece for performance that evening. We also had three slightly larger ensembles, a Mingus group, a Soul group, and a Salsa group (which I chose, because I'm pretty weak on Latin rhythms). Those groups prepared performances for the final evening of the school, except for the Salsa group. We played three pieces for dancing at a Salsa evening on Friday. We also had instrumental sessions with the teachers, master-classes, and improvisation lessons. sWe had classes from ten to one and then from four to six, and organized jam sessions and performances till eight, when we had supper. After supper sometimes our teachers played for us, once a French group that was sharing the facilities with us gave a concert, and so on. There were disorganized jam sessions until the wee hours of the morning. I stayed up till one-thirty or so one night, but I didn't get much out of that part of the program. ![]() My biggest obstacle to improvising with assurance is my tendency to get lost in the form (or my fear that I'll get lost). I tend to compensate by gluing myself to the lead-sheet, using my eyes instead of my ears, so it was very useful to me to learn something strictly by ear, without the safety net of written music. ![]() But I don't want to go on about the specific things I learned, things that I want to work on and use now that I'm back home. The main point is that by the end of the week, a lot of us were sounding pretty good, playing confidently with a full tone, and enjoying ourselves. People who had never met had formed ensembles and were playing together nicely. Andrea and her brother Scott supervised the early evening jam sessions and made certain that no one got up on stage and monopolized the action, and the atmosphere among us was uniformly generous. People always applauded your solos, even if you got lost and sounded like shit. What may be surprising is that there are enough people like me, mainly middle-aged amateurs, who are serious about our music to populate a jazz summer school like this. The other thing, of course, is that this was a demonstration that jazz has convincingly become a world music – you don't have to be American or African-American to love it or play it creditably. At our final concert, on Sunday night, August 6, our performance groups played: the Mingus band, the Salsa band, and the Soul band. The Mingus band started off with "Better Get Hit in the Soul," a lively evocation of black evangelical churches. There they were, about twelve white Europeans playing the blackest of black music with enthusiastic respect. And then another twelve northern Europeans played Cuban music with love and abandon. I've always looked at my musical activity, at least in one sense, as something that takes me places – and indeed it has. |