About Us

Château de Villette has been welcoming guns for twenty years — and for many of them, it's become an annual return rather than a once-off. Ask why, and the answer is rarely just the shooting.

Our Story

COEN & CATHERINE

Coen and Catherine live at Château de Villette year-round — it's their home as much as it is the estate. Coen, Dutch by birth, built the driven days here over two decades, holding the ground and the gamekeeping to the standard he's encountered shooting at the world's finest estates. He's also one of a small handful of non-French judges at the Concours National de Vins Macon, one of the oldest wine competitions in France — no small detail for a table that takes its wine seriously.

Catherine, Belgian, is the cook behind that table, and a genuinely accomplished one. Between them, the dress code stays formal, but the hosting doesn't — good food, good wine, and a good time are the actual point, dress notwithstanding.

That combination is, by guests' own account, what brings them back.

Conservation is not just a number

The estate's land management runs year-round, long before and after the season — cover crops, habitat work, and a bag set against what the land can sustain, not against a client's expectation. It's what a shoot needs to still be worth doing in twenty years, not just this one.

Meet the Team

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LOADERS

As the shoot grew, so did the need for skilled loaders — not an easy thing to find locally in the Morvan. Coen's answer was to recruit a group of local farmers and have them properly trained: two days at Villette West London Shooting School. The one part of the job that gave them real pause wasn't the loading — it was the tie. That problem was solved at home, wives included: pre-knotted and ready to loop over the head, all that was left for the men to do was tighten it.

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GAMEKEEPER

Steven Baird has run the shoot at Villette for eleven years, and has reshaped the drives in ways Coen himself once doubted were possible. Before Villette, Steven ran Cleggan Estate in Ireland — now owned by Hugh O'Neill, 3rd Lord Rathcavan — one of the country's finest sporting shoots.

05

LOADERS

As the shoot grew, so did the need for skilled loaders — not an easy thing to find locally in the Morvan. Coen's answer was to recruit a group of local farmers and have them properly trained: two days at Villette West London Shooting School. The one part of the job that gave them real pause wasn't the loading — it was the tie. That problem was solved at home, wives included: pre-knotted and ready to loop over the head, all that was left for the men to do was tighten it.