Help save my 300 year old roof in rural France

Hi, my name is Julia and I moved from Australia to France in 2019 to follow my life long dream to live in and renovate a beautiful old French country manor house.

I have dedicated all my time, energy and money restoring the house plus outbuildings and have now created a B&B and gite business that operates through the summer season, as living in rural France unfortunately there is no out of summer season holiday bookings therefore we only have a few months in the year to earn money to last the full year.

My house is almost 300 year old but built on much older foundations. It is a solid stone house with original solid oak floors, the house is full of character. The roof of the house is very special and different to the normal in the area. The attic is a spectacular structure and is over 10 metres high from the attic floor to the top ridge. This makes the roof very steep. The roof is constructed from a thick stone rounded slates nailed into the oak beams. Over time the nails have now rusted out and disappeared and it is the only the weight of the slates holding themselves all in place.

The roof needs to be attended to by someone who understands it, luckily I have found the roofing artisan that has maintained the roof for several years with the previous owner before I purchased the property in 2019. He is willing to continue with the maintenance of the roof, but to get it back up to a non leaking condition, as it has had no attention for over 5 years now, he will need to do some expensive work to it.

This is why I am asking for gofundme to help with raising the funds to secure this first and crucial step to secure the future of this incredible roof. At the moment we have identified over 12 areas that need immediate attention as slates have moved, slipped or come of the roof completely in storms allowing rain to come into the attic. Some timbers need replacing along with slates. With each new storm or high winds that come the roof is compromised further which results in the whole house being compromised and all the restoration and renovations already done.

Thank you for reading my story