We always knew the heads were there. They shared our bedroom every night, quiet, unseen. Finally, we decided they should be uncovered.

Our house is old: it was built around 1500 during what is known, in this part of Normandy, as L’Epoque Anglaise (the English Era). Although the property spent part of its recent history as a near ruin, some original features remain. The massive granite blocks that surround the main door and window are carved with a decorative roll and each is surmounted by a carving depicting an inverted shield carrying a fleur-de-lys. The main window is covered by an iron grille in the middle of which is another fleur-de-lys, this time inside an inverted heart. The wooden roof wall plates are carved with a line of tooth-like dentilles. And there are stone seats and a granite sink in the living room.

The main room also boasts a huge fireplace – 2.6m wide and more than 1m deep, with the front edge of the overhanging chimney being one gigantic (though worryingly cracked) piece of granite. This is supported on two huge granite corbels that run back through the wall. Each corbel is about 40cm wide, nearly 50cm deep and more than 1.5m long, so that it pokes out of the wall on the outside of the house to achieve its cantilevering effect.

Part of the house collapsed long ago, and one disused corbel now lies abandoned in the garden, for all the world like a fallen menhir.

All the corbels are carved with a kind of fluting effect. The detail on the right-hand corbel supporting the fireplace is less ornate than the one on the left. In fact, it looks unfinished. This, we thought, is consistent with the rest of the carving. Flanking the fireplace, on the uprights supporting the corbels, are carved heads – unquestionably the best original features in the house. Until now.

The head on the left shows a classically Norman face. A band across the forehead makes it look as though he might be wearing a soldier’s helmet. The feature on the right-hand side, however, is somewhat cruder. There are no facial features – just what we took to be a deeply cleft chin. Again, we thought it was unfinished. We were wrong.

A visit from a local historian put us right. The head on the left, he said, was that of the seigneur, the master of the house. The feature on the right (image, left) represents his lady, but not her face – it is, in fact, a depiction of a far more intimate part of her body. Apparently, the seigneur‘s memento would once have had a similarly bawdy embellishment, with the stone below the head carrying a large phallus. This has since been reduced, by people in a more prudish age, to a mere stump.

There are two more heads, but in the 11 years we’ve owned the house we had only barely glimpsed them once or twice. They also flank a fireplace – in the bedroom. By the way, the number of fireplaces (there’s another in the kitchen, a fourth in one of the barns and yet another in the boulangerie), the size of the granite blocks and above all the carving tell us that the house was built by a wealthy man.

The bedroom fireplace lacks a chimney – that disappeared many generations ago. And the heads – at least in all the time we’ve owned the house – had been hidden behind a large bed with built-in wardrobes. We’d never much liked the bed, but it was very French and very useful. Finally, though, we’ve got rid of it and have taken our first proper look at the carved heads. And they’re even better than we imagined – finer, indeed, than those of the main fireplace downstairs.

This time, the seigneur (see first picture) is clearly on the right-hand side, because that head has a beard. (Although, having seen some of the locals, maybe that’s not such a reliable guide.) And, luckily for him, his phallus is intact (see right), if a tad, um, stylised.

And unlike in the salon, his companion has a face (last picture, below). In fact, the head on the left-hand side of the fireplace looks remarkably similar to the one in the same location downstairs. So there’s some debate about where this fireplace depicts two males or whether the crudity of the carving and the stylised representation means that it’s hard to tell male from female (apart from when they show beards and genitals).

Anyway, we’re pleased to have finally met our guests – or maybe we’re their guests, as they were here first and will no doubt outlast us.

(Footnote: Yes, I know this has nothing to do with megaliths, but I will use this blog, from time to time, to talk about other items of historical interest in the region.)