Duke of Windsor's French home to let

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor's former French home is available for holiday lets.

Le Moulin de la Tuilerie in Gif-sur-Yvette, 35km south-west of Paris, was the only house the former Edward VIII and Mrs Wallis Simpson ever owned, according to the Landmark Trust, which is expanding into France for the first time.

A week at the property at the end of June will cost £3,440.

The trust is a British charity that restores derelict buildings of historical or architectural interest and rents them out for holidays to earn money to cover maintenance costs.

After the Second World War, the Windsors settled in France, where the government granted them exemption from income tax.

The house near the Bois de Boulogne was rented from the Paris mairie at a nominal fee, whereas their country retreat was their own.

The Landmark Trust says they entertained the likes of Maria Callas, Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and Cecil Beaton there.

Trust spokesman David Dawson said: "This is the first step in a larger move into France. Landmark France has been set up to work with the Conservatoire du Littoral [a state body that owns and protects sensitive coastal areas] because they have massive tracts of coastline, with buildings they don't really know what to do with."

Mr Dawson said the Conservatoire du Littoral, which was inspired by the National Trust, is primarily a nature conservancy body and is forbidden in its statutes from commercialising properties on its land, though it must find sustainable uses for them. It therefore invited the trust to work in partnership with it.

The Moulin de la Tuilerie itself is not on conservatoire land (the acquisition comes thanks to a "timely agreement with its English owner", says the trust), but any surplus from renting it will be reinvested in France.

The buildings at Le Moulin, a former tile-making mill, are set around a courtyard behind oak gates and the grounds include ancient woodland, where the Windsors buried
the pet pugs they used to dote on. They include a converte 18th-century mill house as well as outbuildings that were converted for the Windsors' guests.

La Célibataire (literally, the unmarried woman), sleeping two, is where Cecil Beaton used to stay.