When you’re researching a novel location, and trying to familiarise yourself with your setting, immerse yourself in imagery/photos as well as textual information. Then try and do some location word sketches. Set time aside for this, dig deep into your location, write as much detail as you like, and keep it all in a file. Don’t write it directly into your novel. Just dip into the file when you need to flesh out your setting more.

I tried this myself for a story set in a chateau. I came up with these random thoughts after reading The French Chateau by Christiane de Nicolay-Mazery and Jean-Bernard Naudin, Thames & Hudson.

So many panelled walls, some painted grey-blue, some stencilled, or decorated with rich wallpapers. Centuries-old paintings hang in gilt frames, fading tapestries depict country pursuits, and baroque clocks sit on ornate mantelpieces. French windows stand open, revealing the lush green foliage of the park beyond.

In the bedrooms are richly dressed testers, or beautiful ottoman beds in alcoves behind damask drapes. Sometimes the fabric is faded with age, other times it’s vibrant, full of colour. The bed linen is crisp and white, embroidered, and the flowered counterpanes are pale yellow or blue, or a rich red damask.

In the linen room, huge presses are thrown open to reveal shelves of neatly folded fabric. On a large table, napkins are tied in bundles with pink ribbon.

One inhabitant of a chateau remembers the linen room of his childhood, the “damp, steamy, oddly fragrant odour” and the “dance of the flat irons which the women stood right on the glowing coals in the hearth, then snatched up and held near their cheek to test the temperature.”

On Saturdays, the linen was changed, and the same day, a clockmaker came to wind up all the clocks in the house. “Tracing a circle on the dial with his finger to start the hands moving, he would then set the pendulum swinging steadily, then the chimes which seemed to mark the breathing of time. He brought life back into the rooms as he passed through them….”

On the dining room table there’s Venetian glass, silver gilt cutlery, and Sèvres porcelain plates, and there’s memories too of the great dinners of past years: “Cream soup, fish, a variety of poultry – turkey, guinea-fowl or chicken – followed by roasts with vegetables, then well-chosen sweets… The wines, chilled or at perfect room temperature, were served by the butler, who murmured the name and year of the vintage to each guest….”

In the wine cellars bottles are covered in cobwebs, yellow labels peeling at the corners. In the grounds, statues rise up among the greenery, and topiary animals populate a garden zoo. Ornamental lakes reflect the stone and brick of a French Renaissance house, and water spouts from the mouth of a stone dolphin. At night, the chateau is lit up, golden in the darkness, chandeliers glittering through the windows. And in winter, while the Christmas preparations are underway, snow lies like icing sugar across the lawns, hedges, balustrades, and stone staircases.

And everywhere in the house, in every room, flowers from the garden, fresh or dried, elaborately arranged on mantelpieces and tables. And walking sticks and shooting sticks stand in a corner of a hallway, and the library is stocked from floor to ceiling and the fire crackles in the hearth, and a labrador lies sleeping on the stairs, and the clocks tick on, tick on, down the years….

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