CHATEAU des Marais came alive with music at the weekend.

AS A build-up to this year’s event, the Vale Earth Fair Collective has secured the Chateau des Marais (aka Ivy Castle) as the venue for a one-day live music festival on Saturday 5 July. This is an alternative to Beach Life, which had taken place in recent years.

It was an enchanted world of meadows, hayfields and animals, a community with cottages and strong family bonds. Utopia? No, Le Chateau des Marais in the days before the Occupation. Mark Duncan took a stroll down Ivy Castle Lane with two former residents and uncovered childhood memories of rats' tails, liquorice and pig-rustling

THE Chateau des Marais could soon get a facelift.