Central France A delightful watermill on six hectares - on the market for €1.5 million - is full of charm and character, writes Kate McMorrow

It took VEF's founder, Trisha Mason, 10 years to restore Le Moulin des Combesl, a delightful seven-bedroom watermill in central France.

She had discovered the mill when on holiday in the Limousin but it wasn't for sale and she spent a year finding the owners and persuading them to sell. The following decade was a blur of weekend trips to Limoges and friends arriving in the summer with spades, shovels and teenage children for a working holiday.

Doing up the Mill was a turning point for the Masons - the beauty of the gentle Limousin countryside convinced Trisha to throw up a perfectly good consultancy job in London and open her first office in France, taking her parents and two children with her.

"Friends had come out to help with the work, were astounded at how cheap property was here and I saw the business potential. I never wanted to come back at the end of each holiday - I hated to leave the mill behind," she says.

A year ago, the Masons moved south to Avignon in search of a more cosmopolitan lifestyle, renting the mill as an exclusive holiday retreat before finally putting the property on the market for €1.5 million. For this money, a buyer will move into a meticulously restored French character home, with six hectares of land and an exquisite 600sq m (6,458sq ft) interior.

The location is about 35 minutes' drive from Limoges Airport and 5kms from the village of Magnac Laval where there are shops and a pub.

With two separate wings, seven bath or shower rooms and a self-contained one-bedroom apartment, new owners could avail of the mill's potential for lucrative summer rental.

Timbers and external walls were in good condition when the mill was finally acquired, but everything else had to be painstakingly restored, including the gardens which are now a mass of summer colour.

The century-old mill is divided into two separate wings which are joined together at first-floor level. A grain barn was converted into the east wing as part of the restoration project 10 years ago.

The original mill house, in the west wing, includes a big country kitchen-diningroom and vast livingroom with wood-effect gas fire.

Remnants of the original working mill hang on the walls and a dining area seats 12 with ease.

A second kitchen, sittingroom and diningroom are in the east wing, where a terrace looks over the garden and mill pond.

Six en suite double bedrooms and a library are on the upstairs level. The one-bedroom apartment has a sitting-diningroom, kitchen, shower room, its own entrance and a balcony.

Outside, the original mill workings, stream, mill wheel and the river are part of the colourfully-planted gardens.

Peace and quiet is what the Limousin offers in abundance, with its rolling hills, wildflower meadows, woods and rivers. Coming here in the summer is like rolling back the years to when tar melted on country roads and every village had its own butcher and baker.

Flights operate to Limoges from Stansted and Paris and the Mill is a 45-minute drive from the airport. A train from Paris takes three hours and stops at a station about 20 minutes drive from the Mill.