Brand new 4-bedroom house with two bathrooms on a 1,650 m² plot — Les Loges-Marchis, Manche

Four tenths of an acre, a four-bedroom house with two bathrooms, and a total of €204,990. If you have been looking at family houses in England and wondering where the space went, this is the listing to sit with for a moment.

Sixteen hundred and fifty square metres is enough for the house, the garage, a terrace, a pool, an orchard, a vegetable garden, a workshop, a trampoline and a football pitch of sorts, with lawn to spare. Land on this scale is simply not available at this price in most of the UK.

The house is our four-bedroom design with two bathrooms, over two floors with a garage. Downstairs, a bright open-plan living and dining room opens onto the terrace and garden, with a fitted kitchen, a bedroom served by its own bathroom, a separate WC and a utility room. Three further bedrooms and a second bathroom are upstairs. The layout can be adapted to suit you, and on a plot this size a larger house is equally possible.

The plot forms part of an offer of three large parcels, so the servicing and the exact allocation are confirmed before you commit. That is the first thing we do.

About Les Loges-Marchis

Les Loges-Marchis is a farming commune in the far south of the Manche, minutes from Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët, in the deep bocage where Normandy, Brittany and the old Maine meet.

It is unshowy countryside — dairy farms, cider orchards, high hedges and lanes — and that is precisely why land here costs a fraction of what the same ground costs an hour west on the coast. The village is small, the community is real, and the silence at night is total.

Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët does the work of a town: primary and secondary schooling, supermarkets, doctors, a pharmacy, a swimming pool, sports clubs, restaurants and a large weekly market, all a few minutes' drive.

The Sélune valley nearby has just been reopened by the removal of two hydroelectric dams, one of the largest river restoration projects in Europe, and the salmon are returning to water that was blocked for a century. Greenways along the old railway lines give miles of traffic-free cycling.

Mont-Saint-Michel is around thirty-five minutes, Fougères and its great castle twenty-five, Avranches half an hour, Rennes with its airport and TGV to Paris roughly an hour, and Saint-Malo and its ferries an hour and ten minutes.