Battlefield of Halen

The battlefield of Halen is located at the transition between the relief-rich Hageland and the depression of the Halensbroek where the Velpe, Gete, Herk and Demer rivers merge. The landscape is gently sloping due to the presence of hills and incised stream valleys. The Mettenberg, which helped determine the location of this battlefield at the beginning of the First World War, is one of the spurs of the chain of remnant mounds – also called witness mounds – in the northeast of Flemish Brabant up to Limburg. Characteristic of this ridge is its southwest-northeast oriented structure. It owes its origin to a SW-NE channel, which was filled with glauconitic sands by the rising Diestian Sea roughly 10 million years ago. An iron sandstone cap protected the sand layer from erosion by rainwater runoff. As a result, what was once a trench came into relief (Borremans 2015; Dusar et al. 2014).

Onroerend Erfgoed Vlaanderen