_The Architects and Architecture of Bruges in the Fifteenth Century_
From the commencement of the fourteen hundreds until the dawn of the
struggle with Maximilian, which ended in the final catastrophe of 1490,
the city of Bruges was growing almost daily more picturesque and more
beautiful. Most of her public and private buildings date from this
period, and those of them which were erected earlier were now enlarged
and adorned with sculpture and painting. We have seen poor Louis of
Maele laying the foundation stone of the _Hôtel de Ville_ at the close
of the previous century, but it was certainly not completed until the
opening years of the fourteen hundreds. The documents are still in
existence which prove a fact not generally known that at this time no
less an artist than John van Eyck was gilding and colouring the façade.
The stately octagonal lantern, the crowning glory of the Belfry, was
erected some sixty years later, in 1482, when the signing of the Treaty
of Arras had re-kindled hope; the same year the chevet of the Cathedral
was commenced and the Church of St. Jacques completed, whilst the
southern aisle of Notre Dame and the beautiful Paradise porch at the
foot of the tower date from the middle of the century. About this time
too the present aisles and transepts and choir were added to the Church
of St. Gilles, the Jerusalem Church was finished, the Church of
[Illustration: The "Paradise" of Notre Dame and Gruthuise.]
the Beguins and the Hospital Church of St. John rebuilt, and a host of
convent chapels and chantries and shrines were springing up all over the
city.
In 1477 the beautiful building in the _Place des Biscayens_, which is
now the Municipal Library, was erected for a Custom House; the
architectural gem which adjoins it, the guild-hall of the porters, dates
from seven years earlier, and all over the town the great city
companies--there were no less than forty-seven of them--were building
for themselves chapels and courts, a few of which exist to the present
day, notably the Shoemakers' Hall in the _rue des Pierres_ and in the
same street the hall of the great guild of masons; the beautiful shrine
which the painters erected in the _rue d'Argent_ (it is now the Chapel
of the Josephite nuns) and dedicated to their patron St. Luke; and the
Smiths' Chapel in the _rue des Maréchaux_, in front of which every year,
on the feast of St. Eligius, the horses of Bruges were blessed.
Strangely enough the building in question now serves as a stable. The
foreign merchants, too, were vying with one another in the erection of
sumptuous palaces, where the traders of each nationality dwelt together
in almost monastic seclusion.
Note amongst those still standing the Black House, as it is called, a
grim, weird-looking building behind the theatre. It is erroneously said
to have been used later on as the Court House of the Inquisition, and of
course is in consequence haunted. A most interesting habitation this,
with mullioned windows in which much of the beautiful old green glass is
still remaining, protected on the outside by wrought-iron grills. It
contains a spacious hall with a timber roof, vast chambers with low
ceilings moulded all over with fruit and flowers and foliage, and a
suite of apartments panelled in cedar, the whole fast falling to decay.
Then there is the Paris Hall, where French merchants formerly
congregated, now degraded into a pot-house called _Charles le Bon_. The
façade has been spoiled with whitewash and plaster, but the old gables
at the back are still brown and beautiful, and have endured nothing
worse than the caresses of time. At the corner of the _rue des
Pelletiers_ at its junction with the _rue Flamande_, stands an old
mansion of beautiful grey stone, embellished with sculpture and Gothic
windows rich in geometrical tracery. Unspoiled and unrestored, it is
still a fair and stately building. It was once the hall of the merchants
of Genoa.
Looking on to the canal at the end of the _rue Espagnole_ stands a
spacious habitation which has evidently seen better days. Here dwelt the
merchants of Spain. A little further down on the banks of the same canal
was the loveliest palace of all, the _Maison des Orientaux_, the home of
the great traders of the Hanseatic League (1480). The builders were
already at work at it in the month of August 1478,[41] and when it was
completed three years later, it was one of the most beautiful edifices
in brick in the city of Bruges. Zegher van Maele, who lived early enough
to behold it in all its glory, affirms of the tower that in his day
there was not its equal in all Flanders, and Guiccaiardini, who wrote in
the early sixteen hundreds, informs us that all the iron work in the
interior was gilded. Mark Gheeraert's plan of Bruges, published in 1562,
furnishes an illustration of this wondrous mansion. It was a large,
oblong-shaped, crenelated building, four storeys high, with slender
turrets at each corner corbelled out from the walls at the second
storey, and terminating in iron finials surmounted with metal flags.
The façade giving on the _Place des Orientaux_ was divided into five
vertical panels or bays with round-headed arches. In these the windows
were placed, and the spaces between each storey were filled with
flamboyant tracery. Adjoining the main building, but slightly in the
rear, there was a turreted annex of smaller dimensions, though conceived
in the same style. This, perhaps, was the refectory, for all the
inhabitants dined at a common board. In front of this building was a
spacious courtyard, two sides of which were formed by the façade of the
refectory and the eastern façade of the main building, and the other two
by beautiful crenelated walls with a slender and very graceful turret at
their angle. The tower and spire which called forth the admiration of
Van Maele sprang from the side of the main building, which gave on the
courtyard, and for the rest, towers, turrets, chimneys were everywhere
adorned with graceful panelling or dainty Gothic tracery in moulded
brick. All this splendour is among the things which have been. Only a
fragment of the old palace now remains: the main building, shorn of its
tower, its pinnacles, and its upper storeys, and there is now nothing
left to indicate its glory of former days. This piece of vandalism was
committed about a hundred years ago, when the prosperity of the city of
Bruges was at its lowest ebb. The proprietor at that time was without
the means of keeping so extensive and costly a mansion in repair, and
the city fathers either could not or would not come to his assistance.
It was not only, however, by these public or semi-public buildings that
Bruges was enriched during the period we are now considering. At this
time, and more especially during the long peace of over thirty years
which followed the great humiliation of 1437, there appears to have been
a veritable mania for construction. From Duke Philip himself to the
meanest householder in Bruges, every man seems to have been afflicted
with it.
[Illustration: Hooded Fire Place in the Gruthuise]
Those of the great burgher-nobles who already possessed palaces enlarged
and embellished them; the new men who had recently amassed fortunes vied
with the old aristocracy in the magnificence and luxury of the mansions
which they now built; plain, well-to-do merchants were everywhere
constructing those roomy, comfortable abodes, which, with their high
stepped gables and their façades enriched with stately panelling and
Gothic tracery, still render the streets and squares and waterways of
Bruges the most picturesque in Europe. Even working men, humble members
of the great guilds of smiths, or masons, or carpenters, were making
their homes beautiful with the fruit of their handicraft; constructing
canopied niches at street corners, or over the doorways of the hovels
in which they lived, and placing in them graven images of Our Lady or of
some favourite saint; hammering out exquisite lanterns, which it was
their delight to hang before them, from brackets of no less dainty
fashion; fabricating, of wrought-iron, those quaintly beautiful trade
signs by which it was their wont to call attention to their avocations;
making door, and lintel, and chimney, and rafter comely with fruit and
foliage, fascinating with heraldic devices, and grotesque and leering
heads, and the images of devils and of saints.
Much of this work has of course disappeared, but some of it still
remains to bear witness to the skill and the energy and the devotion of
these poor toilers.
Amongst the nobles who about this time enlarged their palaces note Louis
of Gruthuise, whose grandfather John had erected, probably during the
closing years of the previous century, that portion of the _Hôtel de
Gruthuise_ which skirts the left bank of the river. The stupendous
kitchen, of which we give a sketch, dates from this period. Not content
with this magnificent pile, Louis added thereto, in 1464 or thereabouts,
the great wing at right angles to it, and thus made the home of his
ancestors the most magnificent mansion in the city. Here it was that he
stored his famous library, and here he entertained, in 1471, King Edward
IV. and Richard Crookback. Even the upper chambers in this sumptuous
abode are paved with encaustic tiles, and it is no less than three
storeys high, and when it was restored some few years since, it was
found that the spaces between the timber ceilings and the flooring in
the rooms above were in each case filled with earth. Thus all noise is
effectually confined to the floor in which it is produced. The palace is
connected by a covered way with the Church of Notre Dame, and here Louis
erected, in 1474, a very beautiful tribune of sculptured stone and
carved oak. It is an exquisite piece of workmanship, in the flamboyant
style of the period, adorned with rich tabernacle-work and fruit and
flowers, and with Louis's initials and his family arms, and his proud
device, _Plus est en nous_, which last appears over and over again
throughout the whole palace. It is in a wonderful state of preservation,
and, strangely enough, seems to have entirely escaped alike the hand of
the iconoclast and the restorer. Indeed, the Gruthuise tribune in the
Church of Notre Dame has probably been little changed since the days
when its founder and his family worshipped there more than four hundred
years ago.
[Illustration: Tribune of the Gruthuise in Notre Dame]
There are two other points of interest about this fascinating mansion.
During the process of restoration there was recently discovered a secret
chamber in the great kitchen chimney, and in it the skeleton of a man.
Behind the same chimney there was also discovered a secret staircase
leading to two underground passages branching off in opposite
directions. Neither has yet been explored, but it is supposed, and
probably rightly, that one of them communicates with the vaults beneath
Notre Dame. As for the other, the _concierge_ avers that it leads to the
Château of Maele some four miles out of the town, a most unlikely
conjecture. True there is a tradition that an underground passage exists
between the Chapel of St. Basil and the château in question, and this is
sufficiently conceivable. Subterranean ways and subterranean chambers
are not unknown in Bruges, and they have sometimes been discovered in
strange places. Only recently, when a heavily-laden waggon was entering
the _rue Flamande_ from the _Grande Place_, the ground sank beneath its
weight, and one of the wheels was embedded in a deep hole. Some bricks
in the vault of an unsuspected cavern had suddenly given way, and the
vast chamber thus disclosed was afterwards found to extend for a
considerable distance along the street and beneath several houses on
each side of it. Moreover, St. Basil's was originally the Court Chapel,
and Maele, as we have seen, had from time immemorial been a favourite
residence of the Sovereigns of Flanders. But why should the Lords of
Gruthuise have secretly connected their town house with one of the ducal
castles? It is much more likely that the passage in question
communicated with their own manor at Oostcamp.
Chief among the _parvenus_ who at this time laid out vast sums in bricks
and mortar note Peter Bladelin, son of Peter de Leestmaker, by trade
himself dyer of buckram, and who, in his youth entering the service of
Philippe l'Asseuré, presently rose to the important position of
Controller-General of Finance. Not content with erecting a palace at
Bruges and a _château fort_ in the open country beyond Maele, around the
walls of his castle he built a whole town (1444), which he endowed with
a church (1460) in honour of St. Peter, and surrounded with
fortifications. This place he called Middelburg, and though it has now
dwindled down to a mere village, it was at one time a centre of no small
importance. Here, after the sack and burning of Dinant by Charles the
Terrible in 1466, a colony of brassworkers found refuge. Bladelin
obtained for them from Edward IV. the same privileges and exemption from
English custom dues as they had enjoyed in their native city, and to
this day a street in Middelburg is called _La rue des Dinantais_.
In the great quarrel with Maximilian, Middelburg took the side of that
shifty prince, and the men of Bruges repaid them in 1488 by razing their
fortifications and destroying their castle.
We first get a glimpse of the founder of Middelburg in the spring of the
year 1452, when we find him, in company with Louis of Gruthuise,
shutting the gates of Bruges in the face of a deputation of Ghenters who
had come to beg that city to give them her support in their struggle
with Philippe l'Asseuré, and afterwards, along with Gruthuise, going out
to parley with them and trickily making them believe that they had
attained the object of their mission. 'He was a man,' says the Flemish
chronicler Chastelain, 'of much wealth and of much sense, and the most
trustworthy person in the county of Flanders, although his honesty was
not to the taste of all, and many, alike gentle and simple, grieved
thereat.... He was, moreover, controller of the Duke's household, one of
the four treasurers of the order of the Golden Fleece and but a plain
citizen of Bruges. One excellent quality he had--he managed the Duke's
affairs marvellously well; there, where there was rent or wound, he
always found means to heal or mend, and he paid cash for all goods
delivered at the palace. All this the Duke was well aware of, and on
this account and for other reasons he gave him the high position he
held. For in sooth he was a wise man, and one to be relied on, comely
alike in person and in morals, and none more industrious and diligent
than he could well be found.'
[Illustration: THE HÔTEL BLADELIN]
In the _rue des Aiguilles_ at Bruges there still stands a fragment of
this worthy's town house. It is a spacious, picturesque gabled
construction of tawny brick, with a bold octagonal tower of the same
material crowned with a balustrade of sculptured stone and a beautiful
crocheted steeple. Beneath a canopy of delicately-carved tabernacle
work, which, in its turn, is sheltered by a more substantial canopy of
lead and wrought-iron and oak, note, over the doorway, a statue of the
Madonna and Child, with Bladelin himself kneeling in adoration, and, in
a carved niche below, a shield displaying the arms which Philippe
l'Asseuré granted him. This is a restoration of some five or six years
since. The original work, save some fragments of the stone canopy, had
totally disappeared, but drawings fortunately existed from which it was
possible to construct a facsimile.
Sir Peter Bladelin was treasurer of the Golden Fleece, and the emblems
of this order appear over and over again carved on the great oak beams
in the interior of his mansion.
All that is most interesting in Bruges is, somehow or other, associated
with the Church of Notre Dame, and here, though his palace was in the
parish of St. Jacques, Bladelin founded a chantry, which he dedicated to
St. Margaret, the patron saint of his wife. It is the second chapel off
the northern ambulatory, but is now completely shut off from the rest of
the church and converted into a chamber for the _marguilliers_. Together
with some interesting old pictures, and a few quaint pieces of
furniture, it contains the only ancient stained-glass window in the
Church of Notre Dame. This relic, however, is in no way connected with
the Lord of Middelburg, and dates only from the year 1520.
Peter Bladelin died on the 6th of April 1462, and was buried in the
parish church of the town which he had founded.
There is still in existence in the museum at Berlin a portrait of the
worthy Peter. It was painted by Roger van der Weyden, or, as he is
sometimes called, Roger of Bruges, the most famous of the pupils of John
van Eyck (1400-1464) and is one of the master's last and most perfect
works. It is in the form of a triptych, and was undoubtedly painted for
the church at Middelburg, where it most probably remained until the
opening years of the sixteen hundreds, for a copy on canvas of about
this date is still in possession of the church. It was discovered in
1854 by Canon Andries, at that time parish priest, behind a panel in the
wall of the presbytery kitchen. He had it restored and placed it in the
chancel over Bladelin's tomb. The subject is the Nativity of Our Lord,
and the artist's method of treating it is a curious and unusual one.
_Lumen ad revelationem gentium: et gloriam plebis tuæ Israël_; this must
have been the text which inspired him. In the central panel the Divine
Infant is lying on the ground, adored by His Blessed Mother, St. Joseph
and angels. On the left the Cumæan Sibyl is showing the Emperor
Augustus, through the open lattice window of a typical Flemish
apartment, an apparition of the 'Light to enlighten the Gentiles.' The
Emperor, arrayed in the richly-embroidered garments of the fourteen
hundreds, is in a kneeling posture, and holds his cap in one hand,
whilst with the other he offers incense from a Gothic thurible. On the
right-hand panel are the Magi presenting their gifts, and along with
them Bladelin himself kneeling in adoration, whilst, in the background,
is a view of the town of Middelburg.
The mansion called De Zeven Torens (the Seven Towers) in the _rue Haute_
(Nos. 6 and 8) was also erected during this period. Who was its builder
is uncertain, nor has its early history come down to us, but we know
that Charles II. of England dwelt there two hundred years later, from
June 1656 to February 1658, and when Mark Gheeraerts made his famous
plan of Bruges in 1594 it was still a magnificent building, with four
graceful towers springing from the façade which gives on the _rue
Haute_, and three on the opposite side of the house. These have long
since disappeared. The whole building was remodelled, probably during
the course of the eighteenth century, and it is now, alas! no longer
beautiful.
The Ghistelhof, in the _rue des Aiguilles_, so called from its having
been at one time the home of the powerful lords of Ghistelle, has fared
better. Erected in the year 1460, with its mullioned windows and high
pitched roofs, and far above them its beautiful brown cylindrical tower
crowned with a steeple of red tiles, it still forms a most picturesque
group, though there can be no doubt that, in the heydey of its glory, it
was a much more spacious and magnificent building than it is at present.
Then there is the Hôtel d'Adornes,[42] of which the Jerusalem Church was
at one time the private chapel. These buildings were erected by two
brothers, Anselm and John Adornes, the former in the year 1428, and the
latter in 1465. The courtyard of the ancient palace, with its gables and
Gothic windows, and beautiful wrought-iron, is a quaint and comely
corner, and the little old-world sanctuary, though it has suffered much
from the ravages of time, and more from the devastations of man, is no
less pleasing. The plan is sufficiently uncommon, perhaps unique: a nave
without aisles, and, at the east end, a huge tower of which an upper
storey forms the sanctuary. This is approached from the nave by two
[Illustration: THE GHISTELHOF]
staircases with balustrades of wrought-iron, and separated from it by a
sculptured rood screen. The general effect is very curious, the high
altar being thus
[Illustration: COURTYARD OF THE HÔTEL ADORNES.]
raised some ten or twelve feet above the rest of the church. The
building is lighted by eight windows, six of which are filled with
ancient stained glass (1482-1560), with portraits of the founders and
other members of the family, along with their wives and their patron
saints. In the centre of the nave is an altar-tomb on which repose the
effigies, carved in stone, of Anselm Adornes, the son of one of the
founders, who died in Scotland in 1483, and his wife, Margaret van der
Banck.
Beneath the choir, and slightly below the level of the nave, is a dark
and gloomy crypt, the atrium to the Holy Sepulchre. This is approached
by a passage so low that it can only be traversed by going on hands and
knees, and so narrow that but one person can enter at a time. The
sepulchre itself, which is behind an iron grill, is said to be a
facsimile of the Holy Tomb in the garden of Joseph of Arimathæa. One of
the founders of the Jerusalem Church is known to have visited Palestine.
When Philippe l'Asseuré was contemplating a new crusade, he applied to
this man for information as to the holy places, and there is still in
existence an account of the pilgrimage which his son Anselm made to
Jerusalem. Within the sepulchre, covered with a veil of richly-worked
point lace, lies the effigy of the dead Christ, so realistically
modelled that, in the dim light of the single taper which illumines the
vault, it is difficult not to believe that one is in the presence of a
corpse.
Note yet another glorious mansion--a stately pile of red brick at the
end of the _rue du Vieux Bourg_. It is still a building of vast
proportions, and in former times it was considerably larger. When Mark
Gheeraerts made his map it was adorned with a beautiful steeple, and to
this day it possesses a stupendous Gothic doorway through which there
would be no difficulty in driving a coach and four. A house with marked
features this, and a face full of expression--a house which one
instinctively feels must have a story. Perhaps Peter Lanchals dwelt
here; certainly in later and calmer days it was the home of Mark Laurin,
Lord of Watevliet and Canon of St. Donatian's, and a staunch supporter
of the New Learning, who numbered among his guests and intimate friends
Erasmus, and perhaps too Sir Thomas More and Cuthbert Tunstall.
Presently tenants of another sort inhabited its hospitable walls. Here
for three weeks dwelt the Merry Monarch before he went to the _Zeven
Toren._
[Illustration: TOMB OF ANSELM ADORNES]
For the rest, the Craenenburg in the Grande Place, of which we have
already spoken; the great brown brick house with a tower and a grey
stone gable by the _Pont St. Jean Nepomucene_, and where later on Perez
Malvenda hid the relic of the Precious Blood; and, most famous of all
the palaces of Bruges, the Princenhof of Philippe l'Asseuré; these too
were erected during the period we are now considering, and there are
others no less magnificent, all trace of which has long since
disappeared; amongst them the mansion of Jean de Gros, where Maximilian
was imprisoned. But if this sumptuous residence has been swept away,
Bruges still possesses a sample, sadly mutilated indeed and shorn of all
its splendour, of its founder's handiwork--the aisle which he built in
1472 off the southern side of the choir of St. Jacques.
And what of the architects who designed, and the masons and carpenters
and other craftsmen who together produced all these glorious buildings?
The names of some of them have come down to us--Nicholas Willemszuene,
for example, who was Master Mason of the city of Bruges from 1414 to
1436, and Dean of the Guild of Masons from 1426 to 1432; he constructed
the southern turrets of the Hôtel de Ville, and probably also the
beautiful house of the Florentine Consuls (1429); George Weylaert, Dean
of Masons in 1468 and 1473 and 1482; he was the architect and builder of
the Church of St. Jacques, all his work is perfectly executed, and the
brick moulding of the windows is especially excellent; Vincent de Roode,
Master Mason of the Hospital of St. John, and probably the author of the
beautiful chapel, now sadly defaced, erected in 1475; and, greatest of
them all, Jan van de Poele, member of the Guild of Masons from 1472 to
1516. The most beautiful monuments erected in Bruges during this period
are from his designs. He was not only an architect and a builder but a
sculptor of no mean order. The stately octagonal tower of the Belfry is
perhaps his work; the beautiful façade of the Palais du Franc, of which
we shall have something to say later on, is certainly so, and it was he
who designed the chevet of the Cathedral of St. Sauveur, with the
ambulatory and the seven bays of the apse, and also the _Maison des
Orientaux_, whilst we find him furnishing five statues for the adornment
of the chantry of Peter Lanchals. Van de Poele's work in the Cathedral
is not only in itself exceedingly beautiful, but it bears witness also
to his skill as an engineer. He conceived and successfully carried out
the daring scheme of converting the seven huge windows of the apse into
arcades, whilst at the same time retaining the ancient triforium and
clerestory above them. Thus the Cathedral of Bruges affords a perhaps
unique example of a structure of the thirteenth century supported by
piers and arches of the fifteenth. Van de Poele did not live to complete
the chevet; he died in 1520, and the work was carried on and at last
completed in 1527 by Ambrose Roelandts and John Beyts, each of them
Master Masons and perhaps his pupils.
Until the end of the thirteen hundreds the houses of Bruges were all
constructed of wood, and the designs of the buildings of brick which at
this time began to take their place, with their lofty gabled façades,
adorned, as they generally were, with a vast Gothic arch, were perhaps
inspired by the reminiscence of the wooden edifices which preceded them.
This is the opinion of the learned architect and archæologist
Verschelde, who, for years, had made the ancient buildings of his native
town his especial study, and Mr. Weale and Canon Duclos are of like
opinion; but the most casual observer cannot fail to be struck with the
resemblance which these great arches bear to the huge windows so common
in the gables of churches of the thirteen and fourteen hundreds, and it
may well be that it was from these that the architects of the brick
dwellings of the period we are considering and of the similarly adorned
timber façades of the century which preceded it alike drew their
inspirations.
So too the series of panels or bays which presently superseded the
single arch. These formed a frame for the windows of the various stages,
and terminated at the summit, sometimes in pointed, more frequently in
round-headed arches, which were at first filled with geometrical
tracery. So like are they to the long, narrow windows usual in the
public buildings of the period that a mansion thus adorned might easily
be mistaken for some old Gothic church or hall with its windows bricked
up converted into a dwelling-house.
Later on, towards the close of the century, the geometrical tracery
above the highest storey became flamboyant, and the spaces in the panels
between the various stages were similarly enriched. Jan van de Poele was
probably the first to introduce this innovation, witness the _Hôtel des
Orientaux_. One of the most beautiful specimens of this kind of ornament
is to be found in the façade of an old red brick mansion, now divided
into three houses, Nos. 38, 36 and 34 in the _rue de Jerusalem_, which
dates from the opening years of the fifteen hundreds. In the _rue Pré
aux Moulins_ there is a smaller but yet more beautiful example of the
same date; in the _rue Queue de Vache_, a whole series of houses on
either side of the way, and, most beautiful of all, the charming bay
window which Herman van Oudvelde, in his day Dean of Goldsmiths, added
to his house at the foot of the _Pont Flamand_ in 1514. This system of
ornamentation, which gradually grew more and more elaborate as time
progressed, continued to be employed until the middle of the sixteen
hundreds, or perhaps even later. There is hardly a street in the city
which does not contain one or more, often a long, unbroken series of
façades thus adorned.
[Illustration: VAN OUDVELDE'S WINDOW BY THE PONT FLAMAND]
The tower, too, was a very ordinary feature, not
[Illustration: QUAI DU ROSAIRE]
only in public buildings and palaces, but in the ordinary domestic
architecture of mediæval Bruges. Indeed, at the opening of the fifteen
hundreds, as Mark Gheeraert's map bears witness, Bruges was a city of
steeples. They have, however, for the most part disappeared, and those
that have come down to us can be almost counted on the fingers. The old
mansion in the _rue aux laines_, to which we have just called attention,
possesses, as we have seen, one. It is at the back of the house, and the
summit alone is visible from the street. A stone's throw from it, on the
further bank of the Roya, hard-by the _Quai du Rosaire_, there is
another--a beautiful, red brick, dilapidated structure, crowned with a
silvery steeple, the last tower erected in mediæval Bruges. Those in the
_rue des Aiguilles_ we have already noted. There is a fifth in the
_Place Memlinc_, very tall and very slender, octagonal in shape and
wholly devoid of ornament. When the Smyrna Consuls, who dwelt in the
house to which it is an adjunct, first erected it, it was not so comely
as it is to-day. The waxing and waning of four hundred summers and the
rude embraces of wind and weather have marvellously beautified it, and
the blushing brick of which it is constructed is now all shot with gold.
Close by, in the _Place des Biscayens_, there is another and a more
stately tower of grey stone. It stands alongside of the _Poorters
Logie_, a sort of mediæval club-house where the burghers in days gone by
were wont to hold convivial meetings. There is a seventh and very
beautiful tower on the ramparts at the end of the _rue des Carmes_. It
adorns the home of the great military guild of St. Sebastian. There is
an eighth by the _École Normale_, a mere ruin, the last remnant of the
habitation of a kindred society--the Crossbowmen of St. George and St.
Denis. It is a great square tower of red brick, which originally was
considerably higher than it is at present, and it contains a very
curious stone staircase with a beautiful groined ceiling. This building
is the property of the town, and the corporation intend to restore it
and convert it into a clock-tower for the _École Normale_ and furnish it
with a _carillon_.
The list of ancient turreted mansions in Bruges is completed by the
_Hôtel Gruthuise_. Here are two octagonal towers, one of them of
considerable dimensions and no less curious than pleasing.
[Illustration: GUILD HALL OF THE ARCHERS OF ST. SEBASTIAN]
It will be interesting to note that the taste for towers has recently
revived in the city of Bruges. At least five new buildings are provided
with them, nor do they compare unfavourably with some of the work of the
builders of former days. Notably the red brick tower of the _Académie_
in the _rue Ste. Cathérine_, from the designs of Monsieur de Wolf, who
at present occupies the position of city architect, and the station
clock-tower, of which the steeple is a reproduction in miniature of the
glorious steeple which once crowned the Belfry.
As for the material employed by the ancient architects of Bruges, it was
chiefly brick, not the smooth, fine grained, sharp edged kiln brick
beloved of the modern English builder, but beautiful, rough surfaced,
clamp brick, for the most part small in dimensions, in hue sometimes
red, sometimes what is technically called white, more often
parti-coloured, always fair to look on, exceedingly durable, and in some
cases carved like stone. No less pleasing were the tiles and slates with
which they roofed their buildings, the former flat, oblong, ruddy, of
slender dimensions, the latter of similar shape but not quite so small,
and their colour! grey, purple, green, and, when the sun shines on them,
silver shot with gold. Go up into the Belfry on some glad summer's
morning, look down on the ancient roofs of Bruges, and thou shalt not
regret it.