It might sound like you have died and woken up in Vanity Fair heaven, but this scene could be played out in a tiny Provençal village any day now. Everybody knows the Beckhams have bought a holiday home in Bargemon and, once they have found a place to stay in Madrid, it will be off to France to show off their new home to their local celebrity friends. What is less well known is that their house is not the only English palais in town.
This month Ed Jones, the architect behind the £214m redesign of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, and his Canadian wife Margot Griffin Jones, also an architect, and their family move into Bargemon’s other “must visit” address. Maison Margot or L’Hôpital, as the locals have nicknamed it, is a giant white modern home built among the olive groves above the village. This summer it will be full of the couple’s friends who, while well known, tend to appear in the arts supplements rather than the celebrity weeklies. The Joneses can scarcely wait for Posh’n’Becks to arrive, so that they can invite them to their housewarming party and introduce them to their chums.
“David Beckham is a hero of mine. I’d love him to pop down now that we are neighbours,” says Jones, 63, who cuts a slightly shambolic figure as he puts the finishing touches to the house while pouring large glasses of the “awfully good and only €5-a-bottle” rosé wine.
“I enjoy what he is doing to the British male stereotype. He wears clothes in a very interesting way. Maybe his hair is a bit overdone. But I enjoy him. He looks great. I’m glad he’s up the road and I’m sure he and his wife would love it here.”
When the two couples do meet — and Bargemon is so small it is a matter of when, not if — they will find they have more in common than it might at first seem. Both chose Bargemon for the same reasons. It is cut-off, so their new homes are hard to find — and photograph. With only one hotel in the village, it is not over-run with tourists. And the views out across the Mediterranean are some of the best in Europe.
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It took Posh’n’Becks only a couple of months’ work to come up with the £3m they spent on their 250-acre estate on top of the escarpment.
It took the Joneses a little longer to find the right 2 acres to build their £400,000 home — 15 years, to be precise. But they insist it has been worth the wait. “As architects, you spend your entire life making wonderful buildings for clients — or trying to,” says Jones. “It’s so good to use your passion and ability for yourself for a change.”
The couple spent almost a decade flying down to find a suitable spot to build and almost gave up before they found it in Bargemon. “We looked and looked, and saw awful property after awful property. It was all cheap, thin-walled houses,” says Margot. Then a friend suggested they go to see Jean-Louis Lagadou, the local agent who found the Beckhams their home.
“There was this picture of a tumbled-down, Jean de Florette-style shepherd’s hut in a 2-acre field above Bargemon in his window, and we said: ‘What about that?’ He said it was for sale for £30,000.” Jones had just received a windfall of £32,000 when the RAC club, of which he is a member, was bought by the Lex Group. So the couple put in an offer subject to planning permission — known as a compromis du vente.
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There are strict rules governing the size of new homes in Provence. The size of a property is determined by the scale of the estate on which it is being built. After an anxious two-month wait, the planning authority in Draguignan approved the white-washed structure, but limited it to 2,500sq ft. “We were delighted. By mixing inside and outside space we knew we could create a large home. And to approve the colour white when everything else is reddy-brown was a bonus,” says Jones.
The couple set about building their minimalist home, planning it at their home in north London at weekends. “I had to fit it around projects like the Royal Opera House,” says Jones. “It’s odd trying to do a £400,000 house for yourself when you’re spending £5m a month for 24 months on a huge scheme like Covent Garden.”
Once building started, the couple found local workers could not cope. “The French around here have been doing masonry for 2,000 years. They’re brilliant at it. But ask them to fix the electrics or put in a stainless steel kitchen top and you realise you are dealing with a primitive craft. My advice would be to get the French to do the building work, import your surfaces, windows and electrics and get somebody else to fit them. We used to lie awake at night thinking: ‘Shall we or shan’t we ask the builders to do it again?’” In the end, they always did. It’s taken an extra year to finish but now, four years on, the last of the tiles is down and the pool is finally inky blue. As they survey the bright living room and kitchen and gaze out over Bargemon, a helicopter skims the trees and lands up the hill at the Beckhams’ property.
Aren’t they — like many others in the village — concerned that the Beckhams are, how shall we say, a little too arriviste for a place such as Bargemon? Wouldn’t they, as some local olive-nibbling Anglais have put it, be better off a few miles south among the “glitz ’n’ tits” of St Tropez? Jones explodes with rage and empties most of his rosé wine into the pool, turning the surface of the water a shade of pink. “I can’t stand those people who say this corner of France is going to be spoilt. I think that is terrible. Snobby. Dreadful.” I remind him that critics, including some architects, have dismissed the Beckhams’ new home as “dripping in vulgarity, with its gold door handles and chintzy chandeliers”.
Margot, 52, who has visited the house, says: “It is an old stone house. There are some fine trees. You can quibble about the details, but it is the ideal Provençal house for many people.”
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Looking longingly up the hill as if waiting for his new neighbours’ helicopter to swoop down onto his lawn and the housewarming party to begin, Jones says: “Their place is big, ours is small. We’ve got modernity, they’ve got nostalgia. Just as long as they come for a party, I don’t mind what they think of our place, and I’m sure they won’t give a hoot what we think of theirs.”
Maison Margot sleeps eight and costs £1,500 to rent in low season and £2,000 in high season. Tel 00 33 4 94398849 or email Margotgriffinjones@hotmail.com
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