This Isn't Really a Château Story
Before The Château
We met in 2006.
Lionel spent years travelling the world as a freelance photographer covering the British Royal Family for some of the world's leading magazines.
Claire studied photography at Falmouth before building her own successful career behind the camera, developing a distinctive creative style shaped by landscape photography, storytelling and an eye for beauty others often overlooked.
Photography brought us together.
Life took us everywhere else.
Over the years we built businesses, travelled, raised dogs, survived more than a few disasters and discovered that our favourite projects always started with a sentence that sounded slightly ridiculous.
"What if we tried..."
The answer was almost always yes.
Building A Life Together
One of those ideas became Nousha Photography.
For more than a decade we built Nousha Photography one of London's leading portrait studios, creating timeless black-and-white photography for families from around the world.
We weren't simply business partners.
We were creative partners.
Every decision, every photograph and every new idea was something we built together. The studio became successful beyond anything we expected.
From the outside it probably looked as though life was settled. Predictable. Sensibly planned.
Which should have been a warning sign.
Because neither of us has ever been particularly good at standing still.
The Adventure We Couldn't Ignore
In 2020 we found ourselves standing in front of a neglected French château.Most sensible people would have admired it, taken a photograph and carried on with their lives.
Instead, we bought it.
Not because we had always dreamed of owning a château. Not because we knew what we were doing. Simply because it felt like the next great adventure.
We imagined long walks, French markets, endless projects and a slower way of life. What followed was something rather different.
There was French bureaucracy to decipher, roofs to repair, mistakes to make and more than a few moments when we questioned our sanity.
But there were also new friendships, unexpected opportunities, extraordinary discoveries and countless stories we never could have predicted.
The château changed our address. The adventure changed our lives.
And somehow, thousands of people around the world ended up joining us for the journey.
Why We Share It
When we started filming, we thought people would be interested in the château.
Between us we've spent our lives telling stories through photographs. Today we simply use a different medium.
What surprised us was that viewers connected far more with our lives happening inside it.
The successes. The disasters. The friendships. The dogs, the cats
The endless stream of ambitious ideas.
The reality of building a new life in another country.
Our Chateau Life was never meant to be a renovation channel.
It's a window into the life we're creating together.
A life filled with history, humour, unexpected detours and more than the occasional piece of chaos.
The château may be where we live.
But the story has always been about the people who live in it.
