Francis Paudras first met his hero in the late 1950s. Bud Powell, one of the most gifted jazz pianists of his generation, had just come off stage at the Blue Note Café, in Paris, when Paudras, a graphic designer, introduced himself. The meeting was to change both of their lives.

Powell was a tortured genius, a chronic alcoholic and drug addict who had been in and out of psychiatric institutions in his native New York and Paris. It was during one spell in a Parisian mental hospital in 1962 that Paudras visited him. He found that he was forbidden from playing the piano for fear of overexcitement. Paudras, who had become his friend, couldn’t bear to see him that way – Powell would come and stay with him.

They headed off to Paudras’s country house – the aptly named Manoir La Cure, in Antigny, 45 minutes’ drive from Poitiers – and Powell was reunited with a piano. He recorded more than 300 hours of music in the two years he stayed, on and off, at the Manoir, which is now on the market. It became a jazz haven, attracting other greats, including Miles Davis and Billie Holiday: the lady sang the blues there for more than two months.

It is easy to see the appeal. Once the entrance gate shuts, you feel oddly separated from the world, the air is still and silent, and a heavy calm descends on the 50 acres. The half-moated stone house is more than 600 years old, and the cellar dates from Roman times. At one end of the main building is a sitting room with a vaulted ceiling, towering bookshelves and an enormous fireplace; at the other is a huge circular staircase leading to the music studio.

This has been left exactly as Paudras, Powell and Holiday enjoyed it, complete with a bar, a long wine rack and benches topped with the scarlet velvet cushions they sat on. The large electric keyboard used by Powell also remains, mainly because it would be almost impossible to get it down the medieval staircase. A further reminder of the property’s jazz heritage is a picture of a keyboard that Powell etched on the wall above the arched doorway linking the main building with the guest wing.

When Paudras bought the eight-bed, five-bathroom property, it was in a “barbaric state”, according to Pablo de Orellana, the son of the present owners, Gaston Orellana, an artist, and his wife, Isabel. All the money Paudras made through his design business was ploughed into his house, his cellar (he and Powell shared a love of wine as well as jazz), and his friends’ pockets. “Paudras was a true patron of jazz musicians in the Renaissance sense, like the Medicis,” Orellana says. “He gave them his home and his money.”

Unlike the Medicis, however, Paudras had limited funds, and he effectively bankrupted himself supporting his jazz idols.

Following his recuperation, Powell returned to New York with Paudras in 1964. The plan was to play a few career-reviving concerts and return to the Manoir. Powell, however, soon slipped back into his old ways, disappearing for days, not showing up for gigs and behaving erratically. Paudras returned to France.

Powell died two years later, aged 41. Five thousand people lined the streets of Harlem for the funeral procession. Meanwhile, alone and isolated at the Manoir, Paudras drank heavily. He had lost all his money, both his marriages had failed and most of his jazz friends were dead. He hanged himself in the cellar of the Manoir in 1997, aged 62, surrounded by empty wine bottles.

Today, the house remains as a testament to Paudras’s love affair with jazz and his devotion to some of its greatest musicians. His life inspired the 1986 film ’Round Midnight, an account of his friendship with Powell, starring Dexter Gordon and François Cluzet, scenes of which were shot in the house.

It is important to the Orellanas that whoever buys the Manoir, with its pool, seven-car garage and artist’s studio, will respect and preserve the house and its history. More important still, however, is that the buyer is not French. The Spanish family are marketing the property solely to British buyers.

“The country has nothing to do with me, my work or my sensibility,” says Chilean-born Gaston. “I hate Paris, too. A Frenchman will just come and ruin it.” The artistic temperament at the Manoir lives on.

Manoir La Cure is for sale for £2m with Landmark International; 020 7377 9889, www.landmarkint.co.uk

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