Château Dreaming

Nouvelle-Aquitaine · Creuse, France

Château de Chaumont (Creuse)

Built in 1886 for an opera singer, wartime sanctuary where the OSE sheltered more than two hundred Jewish refugee children, gutted by fire in the 1980s — and since 2022 the one-man rebuild of Dan Preston, whose Escape to Rural France channel documents every beam of its resurrection.

Château de Chaumont (Creuse), photographed in 2019 before the current restoration
Photo: Wisi eu · CC BY-SA 4.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)

At a glance

Built
1886
Style
19th-century château, under rebirth
Commissioned by
Built for opera singer Eugénie Bardet
Signature feature
A seven-storey ruin returning to life on camera
Wartime honour
OSE children's home sheltering 200+ Jewish children in WWII
The fire
Ravaged in the mid-1980s; a ruin for four decades
The rebuild
Bought 2022 by Dan Preston (Escape to Rural France) for €60,000
Visiting
Private restoration in progress; follow on YouTube