Brand new 2-bedroom bungalow near the centre of the copper town — Villedieu-les-Poêles-Rouffigny, Manche

A compact 450 m² plot about a mile and a half from the centre of Villedieu-les-Poêles, carrying a positive planning certificate — which means the principle of building here has already been established. With a brand new two-bedroom bungalow on it, the total is €184,000.

The house is our two-bedroom bungalow: 75 m², everything on one level. A bright open-plan living, dining and kitchen area opens onto the terrace and garden, with two bedrooms, a modern bathroom, a separate WC and a utility room. The layout can be adapted to your wishes and a garage can be added as an option. A plot this size is quick to look after, which suits a lock-up-and-leave holiday home or an easy retirement.

The plot is advertised as unserviced and requiring individual drainage, so the connections and a treatment system are surveyed, designed and quoted as part of the works.

About Villedieu-les-Poêles

Villedieu-les-Poêles is one of the most characterful small towns in Normandy, and it has been making things out of metal for the best part of nine hundred years.

The Knights Hospitaller of St John founded it in the twelfth century — hence Villedieu, the city of God — and the copper trade grew up under their protection. The town still turns out hand-beaten copper pans, and the workshops and the Maison de la Poêlerie are open to visitors. More remarkably, the Cornille-Havard bell foundry has been casting church bells here since 1865 and still does, in sand moulds, by hand: its bells hang in Notre-Dame de Paris and in cathedrals around the world, and you can watch the whole process.

Every fourth year the town holds the Grand Sacre, a procession that has run since the Middle Ages and fills the streets. The old centre, with its granite courtyards and narrow cours, is genuinely handsome.

For daily life there are supermarkets, schools, doctors, a hospital, restaurants and a weekly market. Granville and the sea are around twenty-five minutes, Avranches and the Bay of Mont-Saint-Michel about half an hour, Saint-Lô and Coutances a similar distance, and the Mont itself around forty-five minutes. Caen and its ferry port are roughly an hour, Cherbourg about an hour and a quarter.