The Château de Fontaine-Henry is a stately residence located in the French commune of Fontaine-Henry, in the Calvados department of Normandy. The building is listed as a Monument historique.
Described as a "Loire château lost in Normandy", the originally medieval structure is renowned for its façades, marked primarily by the Louis XII style and Renaissance styles. Owing to its high French roofs rising to nearly on the quadrangular "Gros Pavillon", the château is also considered to possess some of the highest roofs in France.
Location The château is located on the road to Thaon, southeast of the village of Fontaine-Henry, near the Church of the Nativity of Our Lady, in the French department of Calvados.
History The Château de Fontaine-Henry is a family estate that has survived through the centuries while accumulating knowledge and objects. This continuity has been possible because the château has never been sold and has been passed down from generation to generation for approximately ten centuries.
As the estate passed from one owner to another through inheritance, several families have lived there over the years. These include the House of Harcourt family, a very powerful family close to the king; the Cornulier family, which left behind mementos of the French Revolution; and the d'Oilliamson family, the current owners of the château. Located near Bayeux, the estate owes its name to Henry de Tilly, son of a Grand Seneschal of Normandy, who took part in the Eighth Crusade.
On the site of an earlier fortress dating from the early 11th century, the de Tilly family had a new building constructed between 1200 and 1220. Notable remnants from this period include the chapel and the vaulted rooms that once formed the ground floor of the seigneurial residence, which still bear witness today to the full scale of the castle during the High Middle Ages.
The senior branch of the Tilly family transferred its lands to the House of Harcourt when Jeanne de Tilly married Philippe d'Harcourt in 1374, bringing several lordships, including Fontaine-Henry, as her dowry.
The Harcourt family reconstructed the château after the Hundred Years' War. Retaining the estate for five generations, they carried out works from the late 15th century to the 1560s, over nearly a century, giving the château its present appearance. Fontaine-Henry thus became a prestigious residence and acquired a remarkable harmony characteristic of the Louis XII style and the French Renaissance, comparable to the Hôtel d'Escoville and Hôtel de Than in Caen.
Later, a member of the Harcourt family brought the lordship by marriage into the Morais family, one of whose descendants married Françoise de Sévigné, daughter of Madame de Sévigné.Cf. Madame de Séigné regarding the legitimacy of the title.
Until the 18th century, the road to Thaon continued to pass through its courtyard via a monumental gate on the south side named Gloria laus ("glory and praise")."Glory and praise", from the title of a procession hymn attributed to Theodulf of Orléans and still used today during the Palm Sunday procession in the Catholic Church. From this perspective, the stone-carved facades—described as "the tallest in France"—were designed to impress visitors, even though their location eventually shifted to the center of the park following subsequent modifications to the entire estate.
During the 19th century, Henry de Carbonnel, Marquis de Canisy, inherited Fontaine-Henry. He commissioned the building housing the gallery and dining room, while the gardens were transformed into an English landscape garden.
The estate later passed to his adopted daughter, the Marquise de Cornulier, whose granddaughter married Count Pierre d'Oilliamson. At the beginning of the 20th century, they undertook a discreet restoration of the château..
The current owner, Marquis Pierre-Apollinaire d'Oilliamson, has widely opened the estate to tourism in order to promote its historical and artistic heritage. Visitors are invited to rediscover 800 years of history through a summer entertainment programme called Les enchantées.
Architecture By examining the masonry in detail and comparing the estimates and plans from the 18th and 19th centuries, Bertrand Jestaz attempted to reconstruct the various stages in the construction of this complex assemblage of residential buildings. His conclusions were later adopted by Jean-Pierre Babelon.
From the austere Gothic style of the chapel and the Old Manor to the Louis XII and Renaissance decoration of the Gros Pavillon, it is evident that the d'Harcourt family, who owned the estate from 1400 to 1575, consistently sought to keep the château in harmony with the artistic styles of their time.
Although it remained unfinished, the residence remains one of the most valuable examples of the evolution of Norman taste from the reign of Charles VIII to that of Henry II.
Medieval period (11th–13th centuries): the fortress On the site of an earlier fortress dating from the early 11th century, two powerful Anglo-Norman families, the Tilly family and the d'Harcourt family, began constructing a château at the very beginning of the 13th century, following the same layout as the ducal castle of Caen. The complex originally consisted of three main buildings: the lordly apartments or seigneurial residence (camera in Latin), the Great Hall or reception hall (referred to in certain Latin texts predating the 12th century as the aula, though Old French texts describe it as the grant salle), and the chapel (capella in Latin).
To the north-east of the present building, set into the slope descending toward the valley, stood a substantial fortified structure which may have served as a keep. The courtyard in front of this building was once enclosed by high crenellated walls flanked by powerful towers pierced with arrow slits and connected by a wall walk. Following an arrangement already observed at the ducal castle of Caen and which would become more widespread during the 14th century, these curtain walls rose almost to the tops of the towers, thereby allowing easier movement for defenders. Facing north, the entrance to the fortress was protected by a massive gatehouse framed by two tall polygonal towers, which were incorporated during the 16th century into the large quadrangular pavilion. In addition to a murder-hole system and a drawbridge, the complex was surrounded by a moat of which no traces remain today. The castle chapel, now somewhat isolated within the park, was probably originally enclosed within the fortified enceinte.
Despite its considerable scale, the fortress was probably destroyed during the Hundred Years' War..
Several elements from this period have survived, including 11th-century vault fragments, the largely Romanesque chapel built by Henry de Tilly (rib-vaulted during the 13th century and partly modified in the 16th century), and the rib-vaulted cellars dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, which originally formed the ground floor of the seigneurial residence. Through their sobriety and restrained ornamentation, these features are associated with the Classical Gothic style (1180–1230), then exemplified by the cathedrals of Chartres and Bourges, thereby reflecting the care devoted to the aesthetic quality of the building.
Late Middle Ages (14th–15th centuries): reconstruction
When Jeanne de Tilly married Philippe d'Harcourt in 1374, she brought him several estates as a dowry, including that of Fontaine-Henry. It was during this period that a major reconstruction of the medieval castle—which had been partially destroyed during the Hundred Years' War—was undertaken. This work was continued by their descendants, gradually giving the building its present appearance.
Breaking with the original layout of the fortress, which had linked the gatehouse to the main building, the northern end of the structure was rebuilt starting in the late 14th century to serve as the steward's residence. Built in a very sober Flamboyant Gothic style in the mid-15th century, the stair turret and the last bay on the right of the central section date from this first phase of construction.
Louis XII style (1495–1515/1530): transition
In 1497, Jean d'Harcourt inherited the estate and, together with his son Pierre, Baron of Briouze, undertook the complete rebuilding of the manorial residence.
A sign of changing times, the façade of the new building was now conceived on a monumental scale. Following the decades of turmoil and the final phases of the Hundred Years' War, Fontaine-Henry reflected a renewed desire to impress and to assert restored noble power by drawing upon the architectural vocabulary of religious buildings. Although constructed only a few years after the farmer's residence and in direct continuity with it, the restrained Flamboyant Gothic style of the earlier structure had already begun to give way to a transitional style between Gothic architecture and the Early French Renaissance. This phase of construction, therefore, belongs to the height of the Louis XII style (1495–1515/1530).
In French architectural terminology, corps de logisThe façade of the residential wing, like that of Argouges, demonstrates a clear architectural evolution from the mid-15th century to the early 16th century. refers to the principal residential block of a château or manor house. also recalls certain contemporary arrangements observed at the Château de Blois and the Parlement of Rouen, particularly in the traditional appearance of its high roof structures and in the regular, symmetrical elevation of its three bays centred around a richly ornamented dormer window interrupting an openwork balustrade decorated with gargoyles. Influenced by Italian architecture, these more regular superimposed openings, linked together by mouldings, clearly foreshadow the grid-like treatment of exterior walls characteristic of the Early French Renaissance. Likewise, although the balustrade crowning the structure still appears fully rooted in the spirit of Flamboyant Gothic architecture, its orderly composition and stylised decorative motifs already anticipate developments of the French Renaissance.
Typical of the Louis XII style, the enlargement of the windows on this part of the building conveyed a sense of luxury, while their abundance contributed to the château's picturesque appearance. In addition to providing greater light, these wider openings also allowed improved ventilation of the rooms, reflecting new concerns for comfort and hygiene.
Following a broader architectural trend of the period, the pointed Gothic arch was everywhere replaced by the accolade arch or ogee arch, giving the ensemble similarities to the Hôtel de Ville of Compiègne, where comparable Flamboyant Gothic dormer windows surmounted by openwork arcading may also be found. It was precisely this French architectural tradition that appealed to Sebastiano Serlio upon his arrival in Paris in 1540: according to him, dormer windows "are great ornaments for buildings, like a crown", while the large roofs covered with bluish slate were "very pleasant and noble things".