newtofrance

Hi,   I wonder if anyone can give me advice on what in the UK might be called treasure trove.   My wife and I bought an old Chateaux two years ago.  We only paid 150k for it and it really is a a wreck.  Over the two years we have been doing it up.    Previous to us an English family had it, they had done the roof and made a few rooms habitable but run out of money, it realy was not liveable…..   Before them an old man lived in it…  He lived there alone with no power for the last 40 odd years.  It seems the family who used to be very rich lost all their cash which was invested in Russian Stock.  I believe the Russian revolution left many great French Families penniless…   When we moved in we did find lots of very interesting stock certificates and other stuff but nothing of values.   In th course of doing the place up we spoke to the Mayor who informed us that the house was once the finest in the regeon and the vineyards were well known.  All that alas is gone and all the land has been sold off.  He also told us that during the war the chateau was used as a police HQ (I think Police).  It can not have been Solfiers as it is in the Dordogne…. Just on the border with Gironde… Literally over the river…   Anyway.  We have just started in the basements.  We planned to break up the huge wine vats with pneumatic drills etc..  These as you may know are huge concrete vats (long before steel was used).. they are about 5m long, 4 m wide and 3m tall… Basically like little rooms.   On the face of each is a bolted door way just large enough for a man to squeeze in.  These were for cleaning out the vats.   In order to show my son what they looked like inside I managed to remove one door…  I had to cut the bolts off with a disc.   Inside we found row upon row of bottles…  I thought at first maybe someone had dumped them there but these all were stacked.  We also found literally thousands of documents.  They are in French and most are dated 1942 and 1943.  We have now prised off the doors to the other 3 bats and found the same;  Literally thousands of bottles of wine and box upon box of documents, ID papers and various other items…  Some of which clearly have been stashed for value.  (Obviously I can not go into detail).   The wine is of several types but we have over 600 bottles of Chateau Petrus Pomerol 1923.    We were drinking a bottle a night before it even occurred to me to check the value….  !!!  There are about 40 other makes of wine, all very highly prized there are about 40 bottles with George Washington’s name on them…. Though heaven knows why…..   I am terriffed to leave the place for 5 minutes.   Is this all my stuff mine or can the French take it off me.  I discovered from the Mayor that his Grandfather was Mayor of the town during the war and I do fear what all these documents might say….   Please can anyone with knowledge tell me if I can keep this stuff.   Dave PS There were also some materials I could not identify, I have an idea what they are but am worried about moving them….