Maison des Tournesols seen across the lawn at Manoir du Suquet, Bardou
Manoir du Suquet · Five bedrooms · Sleeps 10

Maison des
Tournesols.

The largest house on the estate. Five bedrooms, a table for ten, an open fire, and a covered terrace that still works when the weather doesn't.

← The estate

Maison des Tournesols is the biggest house at Le Suquet, and the one most groups end up organising themselves around. Five bedrooms, two of them on the ground floor opening straight onto the grass, and a dining table that seats ten without anybody eating off their lap.

The ground floor runs in one line: a lounge with an open fire at one end, the stairs in the middle, and the kitchen and dining room at the other. Along the front, a covered terrace — roofed, not just shaded, which is the difference between a nice idea and somewhere you can actually eat when it rains.

Upstairs, three more bedrooms under the roof timbers, one of them a family room with a sofa bed. Four separate washing places between five bedrooms, so nobody queues.

Named for the fields. In July they start at the fence and don't stop until the horizon.

5
Bedrooms
10
Sleeps
2
Ground-floor bedrooms
10
At the table

The house, room by room.

Everything below belongs to this house alone — its own front door, its own kitchen, its own covered terrace. The pool, tennis court and grounds are shared with the rest of the estate.

The lounge at Maison des Tournesols, with its brick chimney breast and wood burner
Ground floor

The lounge

Dark beams the length of the ceiling, a brick chimney breast with a wood burner set into stone, and an old armoire against the far wall. Light comes in from two sides. There is a sofa bed here, which is how a house for ten occasionally becomes a house for twelve.

Fire
Wood burner, wood supplied
Extra bed
Sofa bed
Opens onto
The covered terrace
The dining room and kitchen bar at Maison des Tournesols, with the staircase beyond
Ground floor

The kitchen and dining room

A long refectory table with a bench down one side, seating ten. The kitchen sits behind a brick-fronted bar, so whoever is cooking is still in the conversation. Terracotta underfoot, exposed stone, and the staircase turning up out of the corner.

Table
Ten places, bench and chairs
Layout
Open to the kitchen across a bar
Floor
Original terracotta
The kitchen at Maison des Tournesols, with induction hob set into a tiled bar
Ground floor

The kitchen

Induction hob set into the patterned tile of the bar, oven, dishwasher, full-height fridge and a coffee machine. French doors beside it open onto the grass. Equipped for cooking properly rather than reheating — which, with Issigeac market six minutes away, is the point.

Equipment
Oven, induction hob, dishwasher, fridge, coffee machine
Opens onto
French doors to the lawn
Ground-floor bedroom one at Maison des Tournesols, with French doors onto the lawn
Bedroom 1 · Ground floor

The first ground-floor bedroom

Beamed ceiling, pale walls, and French doors that open straight onto the grass — no stairs, no threshold to speak of. A basin in the room; the WC is next door on the same floor.

Bed
Double, 160 × 200
Washing
Basin in the room
Access
Ground floor, French doors to the lawn
Ground-floor bedroom two at Maison des Tournesols, with tall French doors and voile curtains
Bedroom 2 · Ground floor

The second ground-floor bedroom

The mirror of the first, on the other side of the house: tall French doors, voile curtains, a basin in the room. Two ground-floor bedrooms is unusual for a house this size, and it is the reason multi-generation families keep booking this one.

Bed
Double, 160 × 200
Washing
Basin in the room
Access
Ground floor, French doors to the lawn
The family room at Maison des Tournesols, with a double bed and corner sofa bed under the roof timbers
Bedroom 3 · First floor

The family room

The largest room in the house, running up into the roof timbers with a chandelier hanging between them. A double bed at one end, a corner sofa bed at the other, and enough floor between them that children can be sent to it without anyone feeling hard done by.

Bed
Double, 160 × 200
Extra bed
Corner sofa bed
Washing
Shower room and separate WC on the landing
The carved green and gilt headboard in bedroom four at Maison des Tournesols, with the adjoining wash basin room beyond
Bedroom 4 · First floor

The green headboard room

The one people photograph. A carved and gilded green headboard that came with the house and has outlasted several decorating opinions, under sloping timbers with a dormer window onto the trees. A wash basin room adjoins it, checkerboard floor and all.

Bed
Double, 160 × 200
Washing
Adjoining wash basin room
WC
On the landing
Bedroom five at Maison des Tournesols, with its adjoining shower room
Bedroom 5 · First floor

The end bedroom

Quiet, at the far end of the corridor, with a beamed sloping ceiling and a window into the trees. A shower room adjoins it directly, which makes this the most self-contained of the three upstairs.

Bed
Double, 160 × 200
Washing
Adjoining shower and bidet
WC
On the landing
The first-floor shower room at Maison des Tournesols, with a window over the park
First floor

The shower room

Off the landing, serving the family room: a walk-in shower, basin, and a window that looks into the trees rather than a light well. A separate WC sits on the same landing.

Fittings
Walk-in shower, basin
WC
Separate, on the landing

How it fits together.

Two bedrooms on the ground floor, three above. The living rooms run in a line behind the covered terrace, with the stairs between them. Every bedroom has a basin or a washing room of its own, and there is a WC on each floor.

Ground floor N Courtyard Covered terrace, all weather Lounge Sofa bed Fireplace Stairs Kitchen and dining Table for ten Bedroom 1 Double 160 × 200 WC Bedroom 2 Double 160 × 200 First floor Bedroom 3 Family room · double 160 × 200 + sofa bed Shower room WC Landing Corridor Bedroom 5 Double 160 × 200 Bedroom 4 Double 160 × 200 Shower and bidet Wash basin room

Indicative layout · not to scale · all beds 160 × 200

And everything outside the front door.

Guests at Maison des Tournesols have full use of the estate. Eleven hectares is enough that you can go a whole day without meeting anyone, if that's the sort of week you had in mind.

The heated pool at Manoir du Suquet, looking over the meadows
The pool
The tennis court, bordered by sunflower fields
The tennis court
The pétanque piste under the trees, facing the sunflowers
The pétanque piste

Heated pool

Twelve metres by six, heated, looking out across the valley, with loungers, parasols and rattan chairs around it. Open May to September and covered every evening.

Tennis court

A fenced synthetic court on the edge of the sunflower fields. Racquets and balls are there. Mornings and late afternoons are the good hours — at midday in July, nobody is interested.

Pétanque piste

A proper piste, edged in sleepers, under the trees and facing the fields. Boules supplied. It is where most apéritifs end up.

Pizza oven & long tables

Wood-fired, with room to seat a crowd under the cedars. Useful when two or three houses are booked together and nobody feels like cooking indoors.

The park

Eleven hectares of meadow, woodland and old cedars. The pool, the court and the piste are all a few dozen metres from your terrace.

The view

Wheat, rape, and in July sunflowers to the horizon. Above the trees, the towers of the 14th-century Château de Bardou, a listed Monument Historique and once a Hundred Years' War garrison. You can walk to it. Most guests do, at least once.

The house in brief.

Capacity
10 in five bedrooms, with sofa beds in the lounge and the family room
Beds
Five doubles, all 160 × 200
Ground floor
Bedrooms 1 and 2, each with a basin and French doors onto the lawn; WC between them
First floor
Family room with sofa bed, plus two bedrooms; shower room and separate WC off the landing
Living space
Lounge with an open fire; kitchen open across a bar to a dining table for ten
Outside
Covered terrace running the length of the house, usable in any weather
Comfort
Central heating, bed linen, towels and robes supplied
Practical
Wi-Fi, laundry on site, parking inside the estate gates
Arrival
From 16:00
Departure
By 10:00
The carved green and gilt headboard in bedroom four at Maison des Tournesols
The estate
  • Heated pool, twelve metres by six, open May to September
  • Tennis court and pétanque piste
  • Pizza oven and long tables under the cedars
  • Eleven hectares of meadow, woodland and old trees
  • Five houses, seventeen bedrooms in total
  • The whole estate can be taken privately — weddings, reunions, big birthdays
  • Bergerac and its airport, 20 minutes
  • Sarlat and the Dordogne valley, under an hour
Sunflower fields and the neighbouring château, seen from the estate
Around the house

Bardou, and what's near it.

Issigeac holds its market on Sunday morning and Eymet its night market on Tuesday. Monpazier and Beaumont-du-Périgord are two of the better bastides in the south-west, and neither takes long to reach.

For wine, Château Tour des Gendres, Château de la Jaubertie and L'Ancienne Cure are all about a quarter of an hour away. For the river, canoes from La Roque-Gageac down to Beynac, the Maxange caves, and the beach at Pont de Vicq. And for the days when nobody wants to move, there is the pool and there are the cedars.

  • Issigeac Sunday market · 6 minutes
  • Bergerac airport · 20 minutes
  • Sarlat · 1 hour
  • Lascaux caves · 1 hour 15 minutes
  • Bordeaux · 1 hour 45 minutes

The other four houses.

Tournesols and Seigneur book together more often than not — close enough to share dinner, separate enough to avoid sharing a kitchen.

Book the Tournesols.

Dates and rates are online. If you want this house together with one or two of the others, write to us instead — it's quicker than trying to make the calendar do it.