Chapel of Our Lady

Our Lady's Chapel, also known as the Beguinage Chapel. Small wayside chapel with a remarkable façade in rococo style, planted in the bend between Slangstraat and Plezantstraat, perpendicular to De Ring, and probably dating back to a 17th-century chapel. According to archival documents, there is already mention of the "Capelle van Bagynhove gestaen ende gelegen op de grote Heerweg naar Dendermonde" in 1623, restored in 1639.
According to the "Ommelooper & Terrier ofte Landt & Caerteboek (...)" of 1772-1776 by surveyor J. B. Van Huffel, the chapel is recorded and described at its current location, adjacent to the houses of P. Van Audekercke and P. J. De Graeve. According to tradition, this chapel was demolished during the French Revolution and rebuilt in 1818 (confer year on the façade) on the same site on the initiative of the Van Audekercke family, of the adjoining house. She paid for the buildings out of gratitude for the healing of their children after the cholera and smallpox epidemic of 1816. Another source says that the family Pieter Louis Van Audekercke, architect, and Maria Josepha Van Geeteruyen, who had eight children, built the chapel next to their house in gratitude for the birth of their first son on 22.04.1818. It is likely that the 18th-century chapel remained standing and was restored or at least reconstructed with the recovered materials, inspired by the similar but larger Chapel of Tweebruggen (see Tweebruggenplein).
Chapel with small single-nave room and flat chancel, built of brick and covered by a gable roof (natural slate). Beautiful façade, now roughly remodelled and surmounted by a baroque recessed and recessed top with volutes and curved pseudo-pediment with iron cross. Bounding sandstone recessed corner pilasters with rocaille motifs on high profiled curved plinth, and crowning cornice capital on which the bluestone volutes of the gable rest. Beautiful mirrored arched door in a profiled bluestone frame on studs, with rocaille keystone and inscription: "A.V.E./ MAR" (Ave Maria), preceded by two steps in bluestone, under crowning profiled drip moulding. Double wooden door leaves with door lights decorated with wrought iron railings with curly motifs. Quatrefoil with the year "1818" in the gable.
Left side façade with large rectangular window. Partially visible right-hand side façade. Interior. In contrast to the rich decoration of the façade, the shallow interior is much more austere. Plastered and white-painted walls and natural stone tiled floor. Against the choir wall is a simple wooden altar table with an icon and a crucifix on it. The original polychrome wooden statue of Our Lady and Child, probably from the 18th century, is preserved in the deanery.

Stichting Open Kerken