THE price might not raise eyebrows in London or New York, but France took notice yesterday when two humble fishermen’s huts with an outside lavatory were sold for €1.12 million (£764,000).

The adjoining white cabanes de pêcheur, built in the early 20th century from wooden planks, occupy a small plot on the waterside of Cap Ferret on the Arcachon basin, an oyster fishing area in the flat, pine-forested Gironde near Bordeaux.

The one-room huts, which consist of one living area and one sleeping area and cannot by law be demolished, were bought outright by Chantal Papadakis, a local woman who is one of several cousins and siblings who inherited the huts jointly from their grandparents. Bidding from a Paris television executive pushed up the price at auction in Bordeaux.

A property boom has boosted prices by up to 30 per cent in the past three years along all France’s coasts, from Dunkirk to the Côte d’Azur. Unspoilt villages in remoter areas such as Cap Ferret are fetching a premium as French city dwellers, Britons, Belgians and Dutch flock to the shores.

The price struck locals as excessive. Sud-Ouest, the regional newspaper, reported the sale under the headline: “Ma Cabane sur le Bassin: 1,120,000 euros!” The paper said: “With a sum like that, even if the property market has taken off, you could buy some superb houses in France, on the Arcachon basin or elsewhere.”

“Obviously this is an exorbitant price,” Estelle Laplance, a Cap Ferret estate agent, said. “For the same price they could have had a beautiful big house with a swimming pool near the beach. But it’s true that prices have shot up around the basin because it is a wild and well preserved place. It is becoming as sought after as Biarritz or Aix-en-Provence.”

Serge Castaing, a fourth-generation oyster farmer who lives 400 metres from the huts, said: “This is expensive for what it is, you have to be honest. But for the village it’s good business which will bring us customers.”

The rush for the huts is not such a novelty, however. Poets and artists, including Jean Cocteau, discovered the pleasures of Cap Ferret in the early years of the 20th century.

Last year, Le Point, a news magazine, sang the praises of such huts, saying that “for those who dream of seasons between the pines and the ocean, a hut on the basin is a must when you have made it in life”.

It said: “The humility of the huts cannot mask their fundamental nobility, the elegance of their forms and their subtle refinement. They are from an era when man knew no other way than to put their oeuvres in harmony with nature."

BUYER'S GUIDE

A hut without beach costs £6,000 on eBay

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