The British invade Aquitaine


French population figures published last week confirm that, after Paris, the department with the largest number of British residents is the Dordogne.

According to L’Institut National de la Statistiques et des Etudes Economique, 6,300 Britanniques live in the department. The region of Aquitaine, says L’Institut, contains, half those “Brittaniques” living in France. Shades of France in the 12th century when the English King, Henry11 married Eleanor of Aquitaine and England ruled most of the land between the Loire and the Pyrenees.


The first wave of British immigrants settling in the Dordogne is generally acknowledged to have been due to economic factors such as cheap properties and the strong pound against the euro The second British influx of the Dordogne, according to Charles Gilloley, President Departmental de la Federation Nationale des Agents Immobiliers, were pensioners or retraites.

Another interesting theory, touted to me several years ago, as to why the Brits were first attracted to the Dordogne is that the department was half way from England to the warmer and cheaper climes of Spain. Finding that the wooded valleys and undulating fields reminded them of home and that it was hotter than expected, these early pioneers decided that buying a place in the Dordogne would prove a better bet. Another story relates to a British entrepreneur who, on a ferry crossing from Dover to Calais, got out a map of France and marked a point half way down south of Angouleme. He then promptly bought a plot of land suitable for a caravan site near the spot and has never looked back.

Despite the recent global financial crisis, with their pensions having drastically shrunk and with work difficult to find, most Brits are staying put and others are still coming according to the daily newspaper covering Aquitaine, the Sud Ouest. The paper quotes “Une veritable qualite de vie” as to why they are leaving Britain to live in the Dordogne.

“I am used to it here and I am very happy”, says Toby Brown who, lives and works in Perigeux.

Another Englishman, Stewart Edwards, who has lived here for 20 years and who introduced the game of conkers to the locals, says he likes the tranquillity and the space. His roots, he says, are here in the Dordogne and no longer in England.