The Rebirth of La Foux

1930s fountain marking the source of La Foux, next to the Napoleon monument in Place de la Foux

If it wasn’t for the *La Foux spring, Grasse wouldn’t exist. For ten centuries, it supplied water to the town for drinking, washing, tanning, mill power and all the necessities of life. Even today, it’s quite easy to see how the channels in which it ran shaped the town through its fountains, lavoirs (‘laundries’) and conduits.

Only in the twentieth century did the problems of pollution and reduced flow put it almost out of use.

As a result, for most of the last hundred years, La Foux has been at best a marginal contributor to Grasse's water supplies, but a new treatment plant has just been completed which brings the spring back to life as a significant source of domestic water for the area. It's located just in front of the La Foux car park, a few metres above the pretty 1930s fountain which marks the source today.

A network of channels

Medieval and early modern engineers were very competent. Over time, they created a network of channels across the town.

Map showing the channels existing in 1830 (taken from a survey carried out in that year which is in the town Archives) overlaid on to the modern street pattern of the old town.

No pumping was needed: the channels followed the contours of Grasse's promontory on the side of the Roquevignon massif. If you look at a diagram of the heights (in metres) of different locations in the old town, you can see that from the original source of La Foux in the north of the town down to the end of rue Tracastel to the south east, the land falls 50 metres.

Even the small knoll of Le Puy, upon which the Cathedral stands, is 30 metres below the source.

Height (in metres) at different points of the old town. Approximately north-west to south-east.

Fountains

There are apparently (I haven’t counted them all!) around 40 fountains in the old town. Most are simply basins with perhaps a little adornment, but several are more elaborate. Especially prominent are the typically Provencal fountain in the Place aux Aires (built in 1821), with its multiple basins, and that of the Place aux Herbes with its tall post. The Thouron fountain of 1887, with its double staircase, is also striking.

Fountains, clockwise from top left: Place aux Herbes; Place aux Aires; Hotel de Ville (Bishops Palace); Thouron

The largest water feature of all is the Fontaine de l’Evêché, which runs down where the original 10th century defences stood. It looks almost as if water is flowing from the cellars of the Town Hall (the old Bishops Palace) above.

Fontaine de l’Evêché, decorated for the Expo Rose, May 9th 2025

There are at least as many fountains just outside the old town. That in the Cours Honoré Cresp is interesting because it dates from the Revolution. The wording and symbolisation is reminiscent of Italy under Mussolini or perhaps of communist times in eastern Europe. It’s all about the ‘good of the state’ and the ‘defence of the country’. The fountain was originally built in the Cours, but it’s been moved around (even elsewhere for a short time), which is probably why no actual water flows through it. I think it deserves to become a fountain again and to be better known as a relic of another era.

Cours fountain, dating from the Revolution. (left) The south-east face inscription reads 'Prosperity of the State' and the south-west 'Riches of the People' while (right) the north-west and north-east inscriptions symbolise 'Defence of the Country' and 'Arts and Nature' respectively.

Other fountains are in what were once private houses. The one in the remarkable garden of Musée Fragonard shows how they were often the centres of eighteenth century designs.

Garden of the Musée Jean-Honoré Fragonard at 14, rue Jean Ossola. It's a pity how the dreadful sixties Post Office building at the back gets into the image!

Lavoirs

A few small lavoirs dot the town today (at bd Gambetta, almost hidden in the roadside wall, for example), but once there were three large ones close to La Foux. One was on the Buanderie (‘laundry’) square, near today's bus station, and another where the theatre now stands. The last remnant of that one is a fountain tucked into the wall of the theatre.

All were bigger than any we can see today, but the largest of the three was that of the Grand Foux. At nearly 60 metres long, it could accommodate numerous housewives, as the 1905 postcard shows. It was demolished in 1943.

Grand Foux Lavoir, 1905. Two of the buildings seen in this postcard still stand today, 5, Terrace Tressemannes on the left and 2 av Thiers on the right

Water steps in Place Morel leading down to the Charles Nègre médiathèque

Conduits

Many ancient channels still run under the streets of Grasse, nearly all of them originally open to the sky. When the Place de Lieutenant Morel, in what was once the Rouachier tanners’ quarter, was renovated as part of the development of the Médiathèque, the designers incorporated a new open channel running down the steps, in a nod to Grasse’s history.

Management and Decline

The flow of water from La Foux was always regulated to share it around, and pollution was known to be a risk from early on. An edict of 1455 forbad the washing of wool for fear of polluting the water. A record of 1568 of a town official shows that an ‘aguadier’ (a ‘waterman’, perhaps) was charged with policing water use. The town archives include an analysis of water quality in 1892 and a record of usage rates in 1918. Another archival file from 1937 contains a large number of complaints about water in the town’s channels getting into commercial and domestic premises.

But by the second half of the nineteenth century, La Foux’s flow was becoming inadequate for the town’s needs. When Grasse developed a new source, the Foulon, in 1889, La Foux’s water became less important. It’s a little difficult to compare the rates of water flow, because the older information is mostly in litres per second, whereas modern calculations are in cubic metres per hour, but it seems that La Foux was providing 100 litres/second in 1850 when the ‘battle for water’ with Cannes (see my blog here) started. The Foulon provided well over 200 litres/second when it started operating in 1889 and by 1918 La Foux was only being tapped for 50-55 litres/second.

Source de la Foux: statistics on usage in 1918. Total output was 50-55 litres/second, of which 22 litres were sold by subscription and 5 litres supplied to particuliers (large houses) while 20 litres were for public use. Grasse archives.

Incipient pollution, indicated by an abortive project in 1929 to reforest the Roquevignon to clean the water, also reduced its attractiveness. By 1937 users of the water were advised to boil it before personal use and in 1960, it was declared unsuitable for domestic use.

In 1984, when the La Foux car park was built, only about 25 litres/second (90 cubic metres/hour in modern parlance) of the flow was captured in a new conduit and directed for treatment to the reservoir of Trois Portes, which is on the St Hilaire hill. The rest of the water fell into the valley below.

Resurrection

When I first came to Grasse in 2000, the unprepossessing modern Hotel des Parfums stood above the La Foux car park. Then in 2021 work associated with a project to renovate or replace it indirectly revealed that it was possible to extract and treat a far larger flow from La Foux – perhaps as high as 120 litres/second (430 cubic metres/hour). Grasse’s supply from the Foulon is currently about 200 litres/second, so such a flow would add as much as 50% to our supply on top of the water already going to Trois Portes.

Over the past eighteen months, a modern treatment plant has been inserted into the hairpin of the Route Napoleon in front of the car park, disguised behind renovated arches and balustrades and enhanced with an attractive external water feature. On 28th May, the town held an inauguration ceremony.

Eaux de la Foux water treatment plant (on the right) with a new water feature (in the centre of the photograph)

The Alpes-Maritimes department provided some of the finance, since the effect is to increase the department’s total water supply. For Grasse and the other communes of our local water undertaking (the ‘SIEF’), including Valbonne, there’s an additional benefit. The new source should reduce or even eliminate the need to buy water at expensive rates from Cannes’ ‘SICASIL’ network. Maybe Grasse wins the battle in the end!

The latest flow estimates announced during the inauguration ceremony imply that the original projections were probably too high. Given the ever-increasing demand for water, it seems unlikely La Foux will solve all our summer shortages, but its rebirth not only revives a fundamental factor in Grasse’s history but is also a practical and, it seems, cost effective contribution to the town’s prosperity today.

*You may well know of other springs called 'La Foux'. It means 'the source' in Provençal.