Granville (; Norman: Graunville) is a commune in the Manche department of Normandy, France.Commune de Granville (50218), INSEE The chef-lieu of the canton of Granville and seat of the Communes of Granville, Terre et Mer, it is a seaside resort and health resort of Mont Saint-Michel Bay, at the end of the Côte des Havres, a former cod-fishing port and the first shellfish port of France. It is sometimes nicknamed "Monaco of the North" by virtue of its location on a rocky promontory.
The town was founded by a vassal of William the Conqueror on land occupied by the Vikings in the 11th century. The old privateer city and fortification for the defence of Mont Saint-Michel became a seaside resort in the 19th century which was frequented by many artists and equipped with a golf course and a horse racing course.
Home of the Dior family of industrialists, an important commune that absorbed the village of Saint-Nicolas-près-Granville in 1962, port and airport of South Manche, it has also been a Douzelage city since 1991, twinned with 20 European cities. Administratively, the islands of Chausey, the French Channel Islands, which include a small harbour, are part of the commune of Granville.
Geography
Location Granville is located at the edge of the English Channel at the extremity of the natural region of the Cotentin. It defines the north of the Bay of Mont Saint-Michel and the south of the Côte des Havres. The upper town is located on a peninsula surrounded by schist cliffs, known as Pointe du Roc or Cap Lihou. The rest of the town extends eastward inland, bounded on the north by the River Boscq, and on the south by alternating cliffs and beaches up to the Saigue stream.
The commune has four sand beaches, one to the north between the peninsula and the river, three to the south on the bay. It occupies ; of mostly urbanised territory, but this urbanisation is now limited by the Natura 2000 European directive and the law of preservation of the coastline. The town is part of the French association law of 1901 of Les Plus Beaux Détours de France. The National Institute of Geographic Information and Forestry gives the co-ordinates as . It is at the centre of the Urban Area of Granville
Closing in the north of the Bay of Mont Saint-Michel and its foreshore of a very gentle gradient, it enjoys the highest tides in Europe, up to of tidal range. This situation also sometimes leads to significant changes of the coastal features of the nearby beaches.
Off the coast, the archipelago of the Chausey Islands is administered by the commune of Granville. It is one of the only island quarters of France. It consists of 52 islands of granite at high tide and more than 365 at low tide covering almost .
Granville is located southwest of its insular district of Chausey, to the west of Notre-Dame in Paris, point zero of the roads of France, southwest of Saint-Lô, northwest of Avranches, southwest of Coutances, to the south of Cherbourg-Octeville, north of Mont Saint-Michel, northeast of Cancale and to the southwest of Caen.
It is also located from Granville in the State of New York, from Granville, West Virginia and from Granville, Ohio, among others.
Hydrography Granville has natural limits materialised by the Boscq river to the north and the Saigue stream in the south. For a few years, an artificial river pierced between the mainland and the peninsula. It was filled and is now replaced by Place du Maréchal-Foch.
Relief The commune is largely at sea level. It rises only towards the interior, a little more on the peninsula from the Pointe du Roc to reach .
Neighbouring communes Granville, located on the Pointe du Roc is washed to the north, south and to the west by the English Channel. To the northeast lies the commune of Donville-les-Bains, the village of Yquelon is to the east and to the southeast are the small seaside resort of Saint-Pair-sur-Mer and the village of Saint-Planchers. The island quarter of Chausey is located off to the northwest, and Mont Saint-Michel is to the south.
Climate Granville is located on the English Channel coast, it is therefore subject to an oceanic climate. However its positioning on the Bay of the Mont Saint-Michel, at the bottom of the gulf formed by Normandy and Brittany, allows it to be relatively protected from storms and wind (even though it may be exposed to the Suroît wind) and enjoy mild temperatures. Annual average temperature stood at with a maximum of and a minimum of . The maximum nominal temperatures of in July–August and in January–February show the mildness of the climate and the lack of thermal amplitude. The insolation values given here are those of the station of Caen, due to the lack of local data. Contrary to a common misconception, of total precipitation shows that Normandy is not a wetter region than others. The record of rainfall per 24-hour period was established during a storm on 11 July 1977 with of water.
In the 1987 storm, wind speeds reached a high of , which is the current absolute record for the city.
Transport
Several highways serve the commune including the downgraded roads Route nationale 171 (now the RD 971 from Carentan), Route nationale 24-B (now the RD 924 towards Villedieu-les-Poêles) and Route nationale 173 (now the RD 973 from Avranches). Granville is located from the A84 (E401). It is also crossed from north to south by the old Route nationale 811, today the RD 911, the road to the coast at Avranches.
The Paris–Granville line departing from Paris-Montparnasse railway station has its terminus at Granville station; it is used by TER Normandie long and medium distance services.
Several bus routes connect Granville with a network set up by the General Council of Manche, Interurban network of Manche with routes 2, 3, 7, 116, 122, 202, 300, 302 and 305, and the Néva network since December 2014, created and operated in-house by the town of Granville.
The Granville-Mont-Saint-Michel Airport allows landings of private aircraft and the Caen – Carpiquet Airport ensures the interregional links.
By sea, the port of Granville serves the Chausey Islands and the Channel Islands (44,100 passengers) and hosts freight activities (197,000 tonnes).
An urban transport network is planned for 2014 and should cross the whole Community of Granville communes.
Quarters and localities The commune is divided into several quarters: the Haute Ville, the historic heart behind the ramparts; Couraye; La Tranchée, which occupies the former site of an arm of the sea dug by man; Le Calvaire; Le Centre, the current town centre; and Saint-Nicolas, which corresponds to the former commune of Saint-Nicolas-près-Granville, joined in 1962. The quarter of the Agora has been classified priority in the title under the policy of the commune.
Toponymy
The name of the city is mentioned in the forms of Grandivilla in 1054, Grande Villa in 1056, Grandvilla in 1172 and Granville in 1175.
All modern toponymists agree on the origin of the Gran- element: Albert Dauzat and Charles Rostaing have classed Granville with the toponyms of the Grandvelle/Grandville type, whose first term is explained just by the Old French grant ("grand"). François de Beaurepaire followed suit,Ibidem. as well as Ernest Nègre and René Lepelley.
According to Édouard Le Héricher ("Avranchin monumental and historic") the origin of the toponym is explained by a character named Grant who received the fief of Rollo of Normandy during the conquest of Neustria.
If experts agree all that it is a medieval formation of -ville, the exact meaning to give this suffix varies between "village, hamlet" (Albert Dauzat and Charles Rostaing, François de Beaurepaire, Ernest Nègre) and "domain" (René Lepelley) which should probably be in the sense of "rural area", initially it had the value of the Gallo-Roman VILLA.
Some historians and geographers of the past have attempted to connect Granville to the Grannonum/Grannona, toponym attested in the Notitia Dignitatum on the Saxon Shore from the late Roman Empire: tribunus cohortis primae Armoricanae, Grannona novae in litore Saxonico. This explains why some 18th-century maps describing the former Roman Gaul revealed the name of Grannonum at the location of Granville (see map opposite). This hypothesis is now abandoned by contemporary practitioners.
During the Revolution, the town temporarily took the name of Granville-la-Victoire (after the siege of the Vendéens she had victoriously endured in 1793), the name was then formalised without this complementary addition.
According to the standard Norman spelling developed in the second half of the 20th century, the name of the town is written as Graunville ().
Cap Lihou is named from the Old Norse word holm meaning "island, islet" and which has in some cases evolved as -hou, as the endpoint.
History
Origins
According to a legend concerning the Mont Saint-Michel Bay, Granville and the insular quarter of Chausey were covered in the Forest of Scissy, sunken in 709. Granville, in the heart of the land, would then become like Dinard and Saint-Malo a coastal town known as Roque de Lihou.
In 1066, William the Conqueror sought the help of the local Grant family during the Norman Conquest. As a token of recognition, he awarded the lands of Roque de Lihou. The Grants are therefore the first Lords of the town after the Vikings. In 1143, the parish of Notre-Dame was created. It is probable that monks from Mont-Saint-Michel went to the Priory on Lihou during the first half of the 12th century. In 1252, in the absence of a male descendant, Jeanne de Granville married Raoul d'Argouges, Lord of Gratot. In 1424, the criminal case of Pierre Le Maçon took place in Granville, which was then judged by the chancery of Henry VI of England in February 1425, in Paris. In 1439, the construction of the Notre-Dame du Cap Lihou Church began.
On 26 October 1439, English officer Sir Thomas de Scales, who served as the Seneschal of Normandy during the Hundred Years' War, bought the Roque of Jean d'Argouges. On the orders of Henry VI of England, in order to isolate Mont Saint-Michel, the last French bridgehead into Norman territory, he had the walls of Granville built. In 1440, the construction of the fortress began. To further protect this city, de Scales had a ditch dug between the peninsula and the mainland, so that the sea and the waters of the Boscq made the peninsula an island.
However, on 8 November 1442, by ruse, Louis d'Estouteville took over the castle since which has remained permanently in the hands of the French. Charles VII decided to make Granville a fortified town and signed a charter in 1445 granting arms and exempting the residents of tax. From 1450, ships were fishing at Newfoundland. In 1470, Louis XI visited the town to ensure its loyalty in the conflict opposing the Bretons and Burgundians. In 1492, the Jews of Spain, expelled by the Alhambra Decree, arrived in France. A community settled in Granville, their right to trade and to lend money allowed the town to arm a large fleet.
Early modern era
In 1562, the restoration of the ramparts began and a garrison moved into the barracks. Then in 1593 the keys to the city were presented to Henri IV, marking the importance of the town to the Kingdom. Under Louis XIII, the fortifications were adapted for artillery. From the reign of Louis XIV, Granville ships also had the right to capture. Therefore, between seventy and eighty ships were armed and Granville gave fifteen admirals to France, of which the best known is Georges René Le Peley de Pléville. In 1688, Louvois razed part of the defences of the town. Louis XIV appointed the first mayor of Granville in 1692: Luc Leboucher de Gastagny. On 8 July 1695, during the Nine Years' War, English Royal Navy warships led by John Benbow bombarded Granville for 8 hours using over 800 shells, destroying 27 of the town's houses. Vauban then studied possible improvements to the stronghold without having the time to carry them out.