Jennifer and Helmet Gorlich are no strangers to the challenge of a refurbishment project, large or small. In fact to say that the Gorlichs are a pair of consummate professionals at the renovation game would be erring towards understatement. The couple have been in the game for decades, even before the concept of renovating and selling property for a profit had even filtered into public consciousness, let alone become the fodder of countless TV programs.

To date, the manoir, on the outskirts of the tiny northern French village of Gouy-St.-Andre where they now happily live, is their thirty-second consecutive property in forty years.

When Jennifer first met Helmut back in 1967 in a rural town in Kent, he was a young German visiting England to learn the language before moving on to France to do the same, at that time neither imagined that that short journey across the Channel would actually take place nearly thirty-five years later.

“Looking back it’s certainly been a quite a rollercoaster,” admits Jennifer. “We started out with a loan from my aunt of £1,500, which bought us a very neglected three-bedroom Victorian terrace in Tunbridge Wells. We spent the next few months in what we considered was simply administering some TLC – the idea of property renovation, unless you owned a stately home or a castle, was still an unusual idea back then, but when we sold the finished house on for £4,500, we suddenly had capital – and we both realised we’d caught the bug.”

It was the beginning of an adventure that saw the couple renovating an amazing array of houses throughout the Weald region of south-east England. “We became a very efficient partnership,’ explains Jennifer. “I’d find a place with potential that I liked the look of, then Helmut would go in and close the deal.”

Amazingly, during this period the couple were also pursuing their careers. Helmut, a qualified hairdresser, had a salon in Hastings, while for many years Jennifer owned and ran her own antiques shop – and with her eye for classic interior furnishings, many of the keenly sought items that she shrewdly purchased during that time still surround them in their current home.
Even more incredible is the fact that this spectacular five-bedroom property, which boasts several large reception rooms, stable blocks and extensive ornamental gardens, is actually Jennifer and Helmut’s interpretation of downsizing.

“Our last property in England had ten bedrooms – but it was a hotel!” Jennifer adds hastily. “It was right on the beach at Littlestone on the edge of Romney Marsh in East Sussex – a stunning location, and a spectacular, quintessentially Art Deco building, designed for the American actress Hedda Hopper. The architect was Sir Clough William-Ellis, whose most famous architectural endeavour was Port Merrion in Wales, where they filmed The Prisoner.”

Needles to say, the couple soon breathed their magic into this faded piece of seaside glory, transforming back into a popular high-class hotel reminiscent of its 1920s heyday.
“It was an amazing experience,” Jennifer recalls, “But also incredibly hard work – with Helmut running the front of house and me pretty much single-handedly cooking and catering for our thirty-six cover restaurant, we soon found ourselves flat out seven days a week.”

“It was at that point, when we were getting too exhausted, that we’d hop across the Channel for a break, and we invariably ended up staying here in the Pas-de-Calais region simply because we were too tired to drive any deeper into France.

However, the couple swiftly discovered that this often overlooked top corner of the country had a lot to offer, and it wasn’t long before Jennifer had spied out the perfect bolt-hole: a small rural cottage near the coastal town of Le Touquet.

“We spent the next two years visiting the cottage more and more frequently,” explains Jennifer. “Finally we decided it would be nice to have something a little larger over here to spend a bit more time in, so we asked a local estate agent to keep a look out for us to that effect. What he came back to us with was details for something that sounded fascinating, if slightly bigger than we’d anticipated; a nearby ‘manoir’ complete with formal gardens and its own stable block.”

So the couple headed off eagerly for an unofficial viewing, arriving at the property as dusk was setting in.

“I’ll never forget peeking through the wrought iron gates in the twilight,” Jennifer recalls; “We were both totally bewitched by the place, and we knew we had to have it.”

And with that the couple returned to England, sold up, and became the proud possessors of Le Manoir, officially moving in during the summer of 2003.

Although the manoir was in reasonable structural order, the large interior spaces were in need of a major overhaul – a task that would have daunted many but one that the Gorlichs, now consummate veterans, took entirely in their stride.

“We got some local French builders in to reconfigure some of the upstairs bedrooms, dividing the space to provide them with en-suite bathrooms,” explains Jennifer, “But the bulk of our work here was mainly on the cosmetics. There was an awful lot of old artex to be stripped from walls and ceilings, and the major reception rooms all had walls clad in the classic French style using heavy fabric, which can look fabulous, but in this instance had all been up for decades and was looking horribly tatty. Once it was down we decided that we were definitely going to opt for our usual palette of soft, light neutral paint colours rather than replace it.”

“We also re-carpeted nearly all the upstairs bedrooms and corridors with a neutral carpet of cream wool. But one of the nicest things about the house is the beautiful array of original flooring we have on the ground floor, from oak parquet to geometric patterned tiles. We really wanted the typically French original features like these and our wonderful curvaceous stone fireplaces to shine through in the rooms, which was another reason for keeping the wall colours plain.”

These beautiful, interlinking interior spaces, with their high plaster panelled walls have been elegantly furnished by Jennifer, using a sumptuous mix of French and English pieces – antiques brought with them from their years in Kent, and brocante items acquired during their time here in France.

“All the sofas came from the UK because Helmut finds French ones much too hard!” laughs Jennifer. “But on the whole I like to think of our décor as a reflection of our lives here – having the best of both worlds.”

Owner’s details
Location: Gouy-St.-Andre, a small village 45mins south of Calais in the ‘Sept Vallees’ region of northern France.

Property: Le Manoir is a large five-bedroom property with extensive walled grounds, including an original kitchen garden, and an accompanying stable block. Dating from the mid-19th century it has imposing, highly fenestrated red-brick façade typical of the era.

Owners: Jennifer and Helmut Gorlich.
Both in their early sixties, the couple are now semi-retired, but still run a low-key Bed & Breakfast at Le Manoir.