Bruges and West Flanders

CHAPTER XI. Coxyde--the Scenery of the Dunes

COXYDE--THE SCENERY OF THE DUNES

INDEX

List of Illustrations

1. A Flemish Country Girl 2. Bruges: A Corner of the Market on the Grand' Place 3. Bell-ringer Playing a Chime 4. Bruges: Porte d'Ostende 5. Bruges: Rue de l'Ane Aveugle (showing end of Town Hall and Bridge connecting it with Palais de Justice) 6. Bruges: Quai du Rosaire 7. Bruges: The Beguinage 8. Bruges: Quai des Marbriers 9. A Flemish Young Woman 10. A Flemish Burgher 11. Bruges: Quai du Miroir 12. Bruges: View of the Palais du Franc. 13. Bruges: Maison du Pelican (Almshouse) 14. Bruges: Vegetable Market 15. The Flemish Plain 16. Duinhoek: Interior of a Farmhouse 17. Adinkerque: At the Kermesse 18. A Farmsteading 19. Ypres: Place du Musee (showing Top Part of the Belfry) 20. Ypres: Arcade under the Nieuwerk 21. Furnes: Grand' Place and Belfry 22. Furnes: Peristyle of Town Hall and Palais de Justice 23. Nieuport: Interior of Church 24. Furnes: Tower of St. Nicholas 25. Furnes: In Ste. Walburge's Church 26. Nieuport: A Fair Parishioner 27. Nieuport: Hall and Vicarage 28. Nieuport: The Quay, with Eel-boats and Landing-stages 29. Nieuport: The Town Hall 30. Nieuport: Church Porch (Evensong) 31. The Dunes: A Stormy Evening 32. An Old Farmer 33. La Panne: Interior of a Flemish Inn 34. La Panne: A Flemish Inn--Playing Skittles 35. Coxyde: A Shrimper on Horseback 36. Coxyde: A Shrimper 37. Adinkerque: Village and Canal

THE MARKET-PLACE AND BELFRY--EARLY HISTORY OF BRUGES

BRUGES AND WEST FLANDERS

CHAPTER I. The Market-Place and Belfry--Early History of Bruges

THE MARKET-PLACE AND BELFRY--EARLY HISTORY OF BRUGES

Every visitor to 'the quaint old Flemish city' goes first to the Market-Place. On Saturday mornings the wide space beneath the mighty Belfry is full of stalls, with white canvas awnings, and heaped up with a curious assortment of goods. Clothing of every description, sabots and leathern shoes and boots, huge earthenware jars, pots and pans, kettles, cups and saucers, baskets, tawdry-coloured prints--chiefly of a religious character--lamps and candlesticks, the cheaper kinds of Flemish pottery, knives and forks, carpenters' tools, and such small articles as reels of thread, hatpins, tape, and even bottles of coarse scent, are piled on the stalls or spread out on the rough stones wherever there is a vacant space. Round the stalls, in the narrow spaces between them, the people move about, talking, laughing, and bargaining. Their native Flemish is the tongue they use amongst themselves; but many of them speak what passes for French at Bruges, or even a few words of broken English, if some unwary stranger from across the Channel is rash enough to venture on doing business with these sharp-witted, plausible folk.

At first sight this Market-Place, so famed in song, is a disappointment. The north side is occupied by a row of seventeenth-century houses turned into shops and third-rate cafes. On the east is a modern post-office, dirty and badly ventilated, and some half-finished Government buildings. On the west are two houses which were once of some note--the Cranenburg, from the windows of which, in olden times, the Counts of Flanders, with the lords and ladies of their Court, used to watch the tournaments and pageants for which Bruges was celebrated, and in which Maximilian was imprisoned by the burghers in 1488; and the Hotel de Bouchoute, a narrow, square building of dark red brick, with a gilded lion over the doorway. But the Cranenburg, once the 'most magnificent private residence in the Market-Place,' many years ago lost every trace of its original splendour, and is now an unattractive hostelry, the headquarters of a smoking club; while the Hotel de Bouchoute, turned into a clothier's shop, has little to distinguish it from its commonplace neighbours. Nevertheless,

'In the Market-Place of Bruges stands the Belfry old and brown; Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town.'

It redeems the Market-Place from mediocrity. How long ago the first belfry tower of Bruges was built is unknown, but this at least is certain, that in the year 1280 a fire, in which the ancient archives of the town perished, destroyed the greater part of an old belfry, which some suppose may have been erected in the ninth century. On two subsequent occasions, in the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, the present Belfry, erected on the ruins of the former structure, was damaged by fire; and now it stands on the south side of the Market-Place, rising 350 feet above the Halles, a massive building of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, solemn, weather-beaten, and majestic. 'For six hundred years,' it has been said, 'this Belfry has watched over the city of Bruges. It has beheld her triumphs and her failures, her glory and her shame, her prosperity and her gradual decay, and, in spite of so many vicissitudes, it is still standing to bear witness to the genius of our forefathers, to awaken memories of old times and admiration for one of the most splendid monuments of civic architecture which the Middle Ages has produced.'[*]

In olden times watchmen were always on duty on the Belfry to give warning if enemies approached or fire broke out in any part of the town, a constant source of danger when most of the houses were built of wood. Even in these more prosaic days the custom of keeping watch and ward unceasingly is still maintained, and if there is a fire, the alarum-bell clangs over the city. All day, from year's end to year's end, the chimes ring every quarter of an hour; and all night, too, during the wildest storms of winter, when the wind shrieks round the tower; and in summer, when the old town lies slumbering in the moonlight.

From the top of the Belfry one looks down on what is practically a mediaeval city. The Market-Place seems to lose its modern aspect when seen from above; and all round there is nothing visible but houses with high-pointed gables and red roofs, intersected by canals, and streets so narrow that they appear to be mere lanes. Above these rise, sometimes from trees and gardens, churches, convents, venerable buildings, the lofty spire of Notre Dame, the tower of St. Sauveur, the turrets of the Gruthuise, the Hospital of St. John, famous for its paintings by Memlinc, the Church of Ste. Elizabeth in the grove of the Beguinage, the pinnacles of the Palais du Franc, the steep roof of the Hotel de Ville, the dome of the Couvent des Dames Anglaises, and beyond that to the east the slender tower which rises above the Guildhouse of the Archers of St. Sebastian. The walls which guarded Bruges in troublous times have disappeared, though five of the old gateways remain; but the town is still contained within the limits which it had reached at the close of the thirteenth century.

Behind the large square of the Halles, from which the Belfry rises, is the Rue du Vieux Bourg, the street of the Ouden Burg, or old fort; and to this street the student of history must first go if he wishes to understand what tradition, more or less authentic, has to say about the earliest phases in the strange, eventful past of Bruges. The wide plain of Flanders, the northern portion of the country which we now call Belgium, was in ancient times a dreary fenland, the haunt of wild beasts and savage men; thick, impenetrable forests, tracts of barren sand, sodden marshes, covered it; and sluggish streams, some whose waters never found their way to the sea, ran through it. One of these rivulets, called the Roya, was crossed by a bridge, to defend which, according to early tradition, a fort, or 'burg,' was erected in the fourth century. This fort stood on an islet formed by the meeting of the Roya with another stream, called the Boterbeke, and a moat which joined the two. We may suppose that near the fort, which was probably a small building of rough stones, or perhaps merely a wooden stockade, a few huts were put up by people who came there for protection, and as time went on the settlement increased. 'John of Ypres, Abbot of St. Bertin,' says Mr. Robinson, 'who wrote in the fourteenth century, describes how Bruges was born and christened: "Very soon pedlars began to settle down under the walls of the fort to supply the wants of its inmates. Next came merchants, with their valuable wares. Innkeepers followed, who began to build houses, where those who could not find lodging in the fort found food and shelter. Those who thus turned away from the fort would say, 'Let us go to the bridge.' And when the houses near the bridge became so numerous as to form a town, it kept as its proper name the Flemish word Brugge."

The small island on which this primitive township stood was bounded on the south and east by the Roya, on the north by the Boterbeke, and on the west by the moat joining these two streams. The Roya still flows along between the site of the old burg and an avenue of lime-trees called the Dyver till it reaches the end of the Quai du Rosaire, when it turns to the north. A short distance beyond this point it is vaulted over, and runs on beneath the streets and houses of the town. The Rue du Vieux Bourg is built over the course of the Boterbeke, which now runs under it and under the Belfry (erected on foundations sunk deep into the bed of the stream), until it joins the subterranean channel of the Roya at the south-east corner of the Market-Place. The moat which joined these two streams and guarded the west side of the island was filled up long ago, and its bed is now covered by the Rue Neuve, which connects the Rue du Vieux Bourg with the Dyver.

Continue reading Bruges and West Flanders free in the Wunder reader →