The highest point of the castle (the postern gate), the site of the original tower
The river Nançon and Fougères castle
The Nançon is a small stream which eventually joins the river Couesnon, the boundary of Brittany, but it originates in hilly country which attracts the rain, so for most of the year it’s full and running fast. At Fougères it was divided by a huge rock. The water ran on either side of it and formed a marsh on the lowland below it. In the days when the only available missiles were arrows, that was an ideal place to build a castle, and Raoul of Fougères did – one high tower on the rock, surrounded by a small walled courtyard.
But on the other side of the Couesnon, Henry Plantagenet, Count of Anjou and Maine and effectively ruler of Normandy, interpreted the building of a castle facing his lands as a defiance by its owner. He razed it to the ground. The old foundations can still be seen.
But other opportunities arose for Henry, who became King of England in 1154, and Raoul, carefully pledging allegiance to Henry first (though never behaving as a vassal afterwards) rebuilt his castle with a new surrounding wall taking in enough land to house a large garrison and all associated trades. It is the largest mediaeval castle in Europe.
But the reason Fougères stands where it does is due to the Nançon, and Raoul and his descendants made full use of that river. It arrives on the north of the castle, and is dammed as it reaches the northern walls to form a moat in front of the entrance gate towers. But behind the entrance was the killing ground. It’s not even a courtyard, just the Nançon itself pouring over the sill holding back the moat and thundering down through the grassy banks of its original course. It was crossed by a drawbridge. When that was raised any attackers who’d breached the first gate and reached the river bank were easy targets for the defenders of the second gate guarding the way into the enormous outer bailey.
That’s not the only use of the internal river Nançon. Beyond the walls of the killing ground it reaches the castle mill, where four enormous overshot wooden wheels used to enable the production of flour and have now been restored to generate electricity. Meanwhile the overflow of the northern moat runs in a channel round the western side of the castle to the southern moat, where it is joined by the millstream before flowing on through the timber houses of the Marchix and heading out through the fields.
Water, the basic necessity for life, neatly used for defence and for feeding the defenders.
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