From, Beautiful Buildings in France & Belgium, Including many which have been destroyed during the war. Reproductions in Colour and Monochrome from rare old Prints and Drawings, by and after Prout, Boys, Coney, W. Callow, David Roberts, C. Wild and others, with descriptive notes, by C. Harrison Townsend, F.R.I.B.A.; New York: The Hubbell Publishing Co., 1916; pp. 204-207.
YPRES : THE CLOTH-HALL
(T. S. Boys)
PRES now lies a shattered mass of ruin and desolation. “Belgium weeps,” a writer says, “for her devastated cathedrals, her ruined library, her churches and houses numbered by the score, and — for the Grand’ Place at Ypres . . . The ruin of the latter means more to the Belgians than words can express, and a wound which will smart for many a day.” For, as the Belgian Minister of State has said, “Of all that made its beauty and its glory, nothing remains but skeletons of monuments on a pile of rubbish.”
The Cloth-hall is levelled to the ground, 206 and even of its fine tower but one corner, with its broken and battered pinnacle, remains. This former magnificent memorial of the old town’s golden days was the most beautiful of the Trade Halls of Belgium, as well as the earliest to be built. It was begun in 1201, but was not finished for more than a century later. In the centre rose the massive and noble belfry, crowned by a spire containing the bells, and unquestionably the oldest part of the building. The Town Hall, shown in the Plate at the east end of the Hall, is a late addition of 1730.
The restoration of the whole building had been barely completed when the destroyers robbed the world for ever of one of its fine and gracious flowers of art.
Copyright © 2007 by Elfinspell