Steendorp

How the brick kilns came to Brussels
by An Devroe © Brussels This Week
15:38 - 24/09/2005
Do not be alarmed if you now see a real migration on the canal on Sunday. Then the migration of forty working-class families from Steendorp on the Scheldt will be repeated. In September 1865 they came by barge via the Rupel and the Brussels canals to Lot. There they went to live en masse in the Carré and work in the Scheppers weaving mill.
My distant cradle is in Steendorp," says Paul Blyweert. "There were three hundred Waaslanders, including my great-grandparents, who left their brick kiln past behind."

For Paul Blyweert, it all started in 1959: "My father came in one day waving Het Laatste Nieuws: 'We have a centenarian in the family, Bake Blyweert from Steendorp!' But as it goes, I only became interested in my family history later in life, and only picked up the thread again after forty years."

Amelberga (Bake) Blyweert appeared to have lived with her family in the Carré of Lot, but after the death of her father from cholera she had returned to Steendorp. Some families stopped after only a few days, and moved to Willebroek, or to Brussels, where they frenched.
"But how did they know there would be work for them in Lot? Those poor brick kilns certainly didn't read it on posters or in announcements, they couldn't even read it. We think that went through recruiters," Blyweert says. "Why they were recruited there probably has to do with military history. In 1848 it was decided to build a new wall and a fortification belt around Antwerp. In Basel, to which Steendorp belonged at the time, workers from all over the region were recruited for this gigantic work. The brick municipality was not called Steendorp for nothing. When the forts were completed in 1865, all those workers were suddenly out of work."

Lured by the promise of sure work: was it good work in the factory? "Joke Vandenbussche and I disagree on that," says Paul Blyweert. "In any case, it was an improvement when you came out of the brick kilns. My mother was a weaver there, I didn't hear them complain."

Historian Joke Vandenbussche read a different story in numerous archives and reports. In 1900, for example, De Textielarbeider wrote of "the still deprived and slavish population, which, although only a few kilometres from the capital, where splendour and opulence are displayed, for a continuous labour of 66 hours a week in the factory, struggles to gain enough not to starve to death." In addition, the workers' houses of 4 by 4.5 or 6.3 meters regularly flooded. This happened when the Senne had once again turned an area from Forest to Lot into a lake.

Brussels rail
Helped by geuze, the only beer Paul Blyweert gets, the idea was born: "We have to redo that migration."

"One hundred and forty years, that's not an anniversary number, is it? But now there are only about ten descendants left in the Carré, within ten years that will be done." The local societies and the mayors of Beersel (Lot) and Basel, the culture department and the culture council of Beersel jumped on the bandwagon. Marc Desmedt of the Beersel Local History Society: "25 September falls into the traditional fair weekend. Well, in Lot there will be a fair. The many descendants and folk singing group Arjaun embark from the jetty in Steendorp, just like a hundred and forty years ago."

Upon arrival at 3 p.m., a historic procession will leave for the Carré. Nearly three hundred extras with pushcarts and household goods will revive history. The company photo book from 1881 and a model of the factory will be on display in the Sint-Jozefskerk during the weekend. Because apart from the large spinning mill, which still dominates the village center even without the improper superstructure (lofts), and the factory entrance, not much has been preserved of the factory that closed its doors in the thirties. The factory past is no less cherished, as the learning walk for schoolchildren testifies to. "If we want to preserve the heritage for the future, we have to involve the children," says cultural policy coordinator Joke Vandenbussche.

"Looking for new challenges," is how Vandenbussche describes founder François Scheppers' motivation to exchange his Brussels trading house for a textile factory in 1845. It became a model factory, thanks to the Brussels-Charleroi canal, the Brussels-Tubize railway line, and the Senne, in which the fabrics were rinsed.
Scheppers was rewarded for his contribution to the industrial development of Belgium with a membership of the Brussels Chamber of Commerce and inclusion in the Order of Leopold I. In 1853 he could therefore afford the construction of a neoclassical mansion in the Leopold district, where, according to Vandenbussche, all the first politicians in the country lived. When Scheppers' factory became the S.A. de Loth in 1859, the board of directors and the supervisory board included many big names in Brussels with a place in the Leopold district. Acclimatisation must have been to come home to the Rue de l'Industrie in Brussels after having spent the working day in the working-class hamlet of Lot. At the place where a Petrofina office block now stands, François Scheppers entered there "un grand vestibule d'entrée précédé d'un perron et donnant accès aux différentes pièces ainsi à un escalier d'honneur, de quatre salons et d'une grande salle à manger faisant suite, office, cloakroom, escaliers de service."

Gregor Legein