Sights of Saint François de Grasse
- Tom Richardson
- Dec 21, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Nov 25
I have lived in the St François quarter of Grasse for twenty five years. You can see what I have found out about its various mills in my blog 'Mills of Les Ribes' but here are some other notable places in our quarter.
The new road and an old track
The map of St François today is dominated by the road built in the 1890s which starts off as av Guy de Maupassant and changes to bd Schley and then rte de Saint-François. It opened up the whole quarter to development and was the catalyst for the building of some very large residences. But it’s possible to trace older tracks across the valley, one of them with a substantial bridge over the millstream. St François was once alternatively known as St Barthélemy, which is why the bridge is labelled as the Pont St Barthélemy in the historic postcard below:
The falls or weirs seen in the photograph have been at some time demolished. On the downstream side, the bridge towers 12-15 metres above the water. Unfortunately, there seems to be no vantage point from which I can reproduce the historic view today.
It's worthwhile to walk the track, which passes two abandoned mills, and leads over the bridge.
To find it, turn left off av Guy de Maupassant, just by villa Noailles. The track emerges again on the 'new' road on the other side of the valley.
The canal de la Siagne
A little further down, the stream runs under the canal de la Siagne. The building of the canal was something of a power grab by the town of Cannes, driven by a Scotsman.
Henry Brougham was a very successful lawyer from Edinburgh who, as a Whig politician, was Lord Chancellor of England from 1830-1834. Visiting Cannes (largely by chance, it is said), he decided to have a house built there and eventually became almost a permanent resident. Amongst various acts of philanthropy and development, he supported the building of a new water supply for Cannes. This came to fruition in the 1860s when a canal was constructed which tapped the waters of the Siagne river near St. Cézaire, ignoring Grasse's claims to the water (see my blog here).
Part of the canal flows through the southern and eastern quarters of Grasse, including St Francois. It contributes little to Grasse’s water supply, despite its proximity to us.
It's possible to walk along part of the canal in St Francois (further along, in St Jacques and St Mathieu, much of it has been covered over) and there are some quite spectacular embankments and aqueducts along its course.
Traces of an old railway
The Chemin du Sud railway from Nice to near Marseille via Draguignan and Grasse ran through the southern end of St Francois and its traces are still visible today (its other branch is still working, as the famous 'train des Pignes' to Digne). The map below shows its course, via a roundabout called 'La Halte' because the St Jacques station halt once stood there. The track was along what are now two roads, Boulevard Louis Icard, which runs over one of the railway's still-standing viaducts, and Chemin de Peymeinade.
Because it was narrow gauge (1-metre), it could twist and turn more sharply than a standard gauge system. In between bd Icard and ch de Peymeinade, there was once a 100 metre viaduct whose single tower in the valley remains today as a ghostly remnant of the railway.
Bastide Saint François
Where the ‘new’ road becomes bd Schley, it owes its name to an American financier of the ‘gilded age’ in New York. Grant B Schley made millions between 1885 and his death in 1917. His second son, Grant B Schley Jr., was a partner in his father’s firm, but, like other children of wealthy American fathers (Henry Clews, of the Chateau de La Napoule, springs to mind) he took up a life of leisure in France.
He purchased and re-built the Bastide Saint Francois in 1925. More importantly, he chose a young French designer, Jacques Couëlle, who was only 23 at the time, to re-shape the Bastide.
It looks quite sedate compared to Couëlle’s later career, in the ‘architecture-sculpture movement’. He was subsequently the architect responsible for the faux chateau of Castellaras le Vieux and the ‘troglodyte village’ known as Castellaras le Neuf, both nearby in Mouans Sartoux.
He also conceived Port-La-Galère near Théoule and was a major influence on the renegade Hungarian architect Antti Lovag. Lovag designed Pierre Cardin’s Palais Bulles and other 'bulle' houses, all on the cliffs close to Port-La-Galère.
It's difficult to see the Bastide from directly outside but its long wall, with occasional turrets, dominates part of bd Schley. The entrance has become famous among buffs of the English film director Alfred Hitchcock, because a scene in his classic ‘To Catch a Thief’, with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, takes place there.
Villa Noailles
St François boasts another significant house just along the road from the Bastide Saint François, namely the Villa Noailles, which is justly famous for its garden.
I've posted about it, and its somewhat eccentric owner, here.
The ‘Umbrian’ houses
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Italians, not British, were the largest immigrant group in Grasse. The census of 1891 found over 2,500 living here, many from around Cuneo – quite a high proportion out of 11,000 inhabitants in all. St Francois seems to have also attracted Umbrians, especially after the Great War. They included the parents of my neighbour, who came from Perugia.
On a recent walk, our guide took us along rue Jeanne Jugan and showed us these houses, whose friezes, she told us, are typical of ‘Umbrian’ houses between the wars. Perhaps the many cypresses on the western side of the valley reminded them of home.
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