Although working out exactly where Macintosh lived in the countryside outside of Avignon in the 1780s is not, in any fundamental sense, vital to my research, it is a puzzle that I have found difficult to resist. Much of the impetus behind my desire to know where he was living comes from the fact that so much of his correspondence during this period was concerned with the house and with a long-running dispute with his landlords (the Messieurs Monery, father and son) over its quality and state of repair.

Thanks to Macintosh’s plans of the building, such as the one above, I have a fairly good sense of what it looked like internally, but where, precisely, it was has always been something of a mystery. Macintosh’s letters from the period are generally addressed to and from “Chateau Brun” or “Chateaubrun”, but in some documents the property is referred to as “Mas des Cannes”. The Napoleonic cadastre makes things clear, showing the chateau (where Macintosh lived) and the neighbouring farmhouse, the Mas des Cannes. Sadly, both buildings were razed during the 1930s to make way for the construction of the Avignon-Caumont aerodrome.