Dick and Angel Strawbridge spoke candidly about their children potentially giving up the chateau.
During a candid Q&A for their book launch, The Chateau Forever Home, the married couple, were joined by their children Arthur, 10 and Dorothy, seven, at The Barbican in London last month.
A member of the audience quizzed: “What if the children don’t want the chateau?”
Angel replied: “We have never been asked that until now. It’s a good question because you don’t know what tomorrow brings.
“We have set this up as their forever home. We have got multi-generational living but we also make it really, really clear that there is absolutely no pressure.”
The 45 year old insisted it would be up to her children what they decide to do with the property, but added they made the purchase to provide security for their family.
The mum of two continued: “We expect them to travel the world but for us, we just know that we have done the best that we can and they have got some security now.
“It’s like having a business and expecting your children to take it on and the reality is they may not want that. We just have to see what tomorrow holds.”
Dick, 64, added that as parents they don’t know what Arthur and Dorothy plan to do in the future but they have options.
Over the last eight years, Dick and Angel have managed to transform the 19th-century Château de la Motte-Husson in France into an incredible home as well as a wedding venue.
Back in 2015, the couple made the decision to relocate their young family from their two-bed flat in Essex to the French region of Martigné-sur-Mayenne and purchased the derelict 45-bedroom property at the bargain price of £280,000.
The chateau which was abandoned in the 1970s, passed down through several generations of Hussons for almost 200 years before it was acquired by the de Baglion family, descendants of the princes of Perugia, in 1600.
It was later rebuilt in the enclosure of the old square moat over a six-year period from 1868 to 1874 at the wish of Countess Louise-Dorothée.
The chateau was once again passed down through the family until it landed in the hands of Guy de Baglion de la Dufferie in 1954, who died in 1999.
It was put on the market in 2014 with The Strawbridges now settled in the 19th-century property.
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