Tailor's House

Situated on Place Théophile-de-Viau, the so-called “tailor's house” is one of Clairac's beautiful half-timbered houses, restored at the end of the 20^th century. It is at the corner of rue Puzoque and rue de l'Eglise, where the cardo and decumanus of the Roman cities, and later the bastides of Guyenne, meet, even if Clairac was never one.

It is a large half-timbered house with slightly corbelled floors. In living memory, it has always had this nickname, although our historian Claude Martin has not found any trace of a tailor who may have lived there… In 1821, when Napoleon's land register was established, it belonged to Simon Jules Claverie, a “grain merchant”, which is hardly surprising since the covered market was erected at the intersection of these streets; the place was strategic for this profession! Behind it, the current crêperie, formerly a school, town hall and private mansion of the Grossolles de Flamarens family.
Guy Morizet's Indian ink drawing shows us the house before its restoration, when the gradual disappearance of the plaster revealed the half-timbering and bricks. The shadows cast and the shutters drawn reveal that it was done in the late afternoon, on a day of great sunshine.
On the postcard published by the widow Louis Clouzié, one can see a fountain as it existed on most of the squares of Clairac ; it disappeared in the XX^th century, to facilitate car traffic; at the end of the century, a well was installed a few meters away, to evoke this ancient presence of water.

It was through his wife that the Parisian Guy Morizet (1908-1993) became Clairacais, marrying in the church of St-Pierre-ès-Liens in August 1939. The architect that he was settled there when he retired in 1977 and indulged in one of his passions: the study of pigeon lofts. He used his talent as a draughtsman (he had won several drawing competitions during his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris) to make surveys combining the rigour of the architect with the sensitivity of the artist.