When Guillaume Mallet set to work on his country estate here in 1898, he had some novel ideas. Le Bois des Moutiers was one of British architect Edwin Lutyens’ first commissions, a stylish Arts and Crafts Movement manor, unique in France, and full of delightful eccentricities. But Mallet’s real tour de force was the garden. Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll collaborated on the walled gardens surrounding the house, which feature massed herbaceous borders divided by sculpted yew, glorious scented roses, clematis, lilies and cataracts of white wisteria. The lawn slopes down towards the sea and a woodland treasury of dramatic rhododendrons, azaleas, iris-edged streams and bosky glades carpeted with ferns (open mid-Mar to mid-Nov).

Just down the road is the churchyard where Georges Braque is buried beneath a rather ordinary mosaic affair. However, the interior of the little Chapelle Sainte-Valery boasts some of his luminous stained glass, a couple of good memorials, and 16thC carved pillars decorated with a seasick mariner, pert mermaid, scallops and other nautical devices.

Dieppe’s most famous 16thC shipowner, Jean d’Ango, also built a country retreat at Varengeville, and the courtyard of Maison d’Ango (www.manoirdango.fr) is worth a detour. Part-palace, part-manor, part-barn, it encloses a spendidly ornate brick-patterned dovecote.