Yurt families facing end of le good life

Bussiere-Boffy: They came to France in search of the good life, setting up home in a picturesque village deep in the French countryside.

Three British families fell in love with the small farming community of Bussiere-Boffy, near Limoges, and six years ago decided to settle there, raising their children amid the rolling hills and lush woodland.

But now that dream lifestyle has become a nightmare. The families had chosen to live in yurts - circular, latticed frameworks of poles covered with felt or skins, which are the traditional dwelling of the nomadic peoples of the Asian steppes.

Now the village mayor has taken to the courts to force them to leave. The increasingly bitter legal battle is dividing the village and pitting those who support the Britons against the allies of the mayor, who claims they are acting “like a bunch of kids” by refusing to comply with planning laws.

“I have nothing against people living in yurts. All I’m doing is applying the law,” said the mayor Jean-Pierre Barriere. The British families disagree. “It’s social cleansing,” said Alex Bovet, who has a yurt on land he and his partner Sara Caumet own. He described the mayor’s actions as “administrative harassment”.

It all began so differently. The yurt dwellers said that at first they were well received in the village of 350 people. Peter Bateman, 44, an artist from Nottingham, moved to the area eight years ago with his partner Janie Corbett, a shiatsu practitioner, and their children Branwen, 14 and Tarn, 10.

Falling in love with the spot on their way back to Britain after travelling around France, they pitched up in the field with the owner’s consent and put their two children into the local school.

Surrounded by pot plants and vegetable patches, the yurt is surprisingly cosy on the inside with a wood-burning heater, a gas stove and electricity provided by solar panels. It has a wooden door with a round, Hobbit-like window with a stained-glass pattern, but has no running water and dry toilets.

“They said we could rest easy, we would never have been thrown off the land,” said Miss Corbett. But in 2007 the town hall wanted to decide which plots of land to allow new buildings on. The families’ right to remain on the land hinged on either accepting the yurt is a tent, or the mayor agreeing to turn the land into a “new building zone”.

“The housing ministry says if a dwelling is made of wood - and these yurts have wooden floors, windows and doors - then it is more a bungalow than a tent,” said Mr Barriere.

Tensions mounted when the mayor refused to put three yurt inhabitants on the electoral list in 2008. All hope of a compromise vanished in 2011, when the mayor filed a legal complaint after being hit with a cream pie during the public airing of a local television film about the dispute.

In December, a court ruled that the yurts were tents and could thus stay put, but the prosecutor appealed. And so last week the three families were once again in court. The prosecutor called for fines of €500 (Dh2,400) and the obligation to leave the land within three months. A ruling is due on June 14.

Miss Corbett said: “The mayor is not going to stop until he’s thrown us out. He sees it as a game of sudoku.”

The mayor is unrepentant. “They’re in a region where outsiders are already looked at askance, so you have to make a big effort to be accepted,” he said. “But they think it’s up to us to adapt.”

In the village’s only restaurant, the owner appeared to agree with the mayor. “The rules are the rules. If I was told tomorrow I could build on the agricultural land I own, then I would do it straight away,” he said.

But Paulo Lacoste, a villager who supports the yurtists, said: “The mayor wants pensioners with cash, not children. If yuppies settle in Bussieres he would welcome them with open arms, but he has a conflictual relationship with the younger generation.”

Vivien Hale, originally from Canterbury, who is the only Briton on the municipal council, said she felt for both sides. “I think Mr Barriere has backed himself into a corner,” she said. “He has done a lot for the village but he should try to find a compromise - not a battle.”