Layers of bacon

At many churches in the Hageland you see alternating layers of brown iron sandstone and white sandstone.

This is called 'layers of bacon'. The view has something of a bar of bacon: dark meat interspersed with light-colored layers of fat. One does not really know why this was done. Did it have anything to do with decoration? Or did they just use the stone that was available? The fact is that the use of different types of stone had to be done in layers and not as a mosaic by each other: the height of the iron sandstones was greater than that of the white stone.

Although both types of stone were used at the same time, you can see from the hollowed-out stone layers that the iron sandstone weathered more strongly than the white stone.

Jan Rymenams