Batiment de France

[NickiNackyNoo]

Has anyone here had any dealings with the Batiment de France?
Our Church is classified and we live within the 500 meter rule.
We want to build a conservatory with a glazed gable end, chimney breast, windows at the bottom and triangular windows at the tops. You will have seen these often around Brittany.
We have permission to build the extension but they don't want us to put in the triangular windows at the top. As you can imagine we really want the windows, it will be quite a nice feature plus giving us a lot of light.
Ours is an old stone longere and we are trying to keep it looking that way, that is why we are building it in old stone, wood and putting a tiled roof on it.
The Maire said that he thought it would be an idea to have velux windows in and also the triangular windows were a bit large, so my husband re did the plans adding velux and reducing the size of the triangular windows.
Yesterday we had an appointment with the Architect from the Batiment de France and the Maire....they didn't turn up. We went up to the Mairie to find out why as we stayed in all afternoon and I cancelled my art class. We told that the Architect arrived late and there was no time to see us. 
As part of our plans to put our view across I took loads of photos of houses with this sort of gable end.
Speaking on the Phone to the Maires secretary this morning, he said that the architect is still against the plans for our gable end, even though no one can even see it.
To say we are peed orf is an understatement!!
So, has anyone been in this situation, if so how did you deal with it?

[buzzybee]

HI NN.
I do know one thing, maybe you won't be pleased to hear.
That if you do go ahead and build without permission, you could be asked to take the offending building down; if you don't comply somebody will be sent in to do it for you. I have seen on TV what happened to houses built without permission, they have just been razed to the ground by huge bulldozers. It would be better to find an amical arrangement.

[NickiNackyNoo]

Thanks BB, we had no intention of doing anything illegal, just wondered if anyone knows of another way around the problem or if there is some sort of tribunal.

[buzzybee]

There's a forum here which makes interesting reading
.
http://droit-finances.commentcamarche.net/forum/affich-4252342-batiments-de-france-et-permis-de-construire


and another which you may like to click around on.

http://www.sdap-doubs.culture.gouv.fr/abf.htm

[NickiNackyNoo]

Thanks.

[NickiNackyNoo]

Just to let you know....we got our way.