The House of Scharpé: a watermill without water

This house is known to Immovable Heritage as the 'Watermill of 1750', although we find no evidence of this at all. The house was built in 1750 by Jacob Pelgrims. He was the owner of the mill on the nearby Molenberg. The style is typical of what we call the traditional brick and sandstone style with, among other things, cross windows surmounted by fan-shaped relieving arches and a round-arched door with corner chains. However, the layers of white sandstone in the façade are 20th-century additions.
The house came into the hands of the wealthy Smedts-Verstreken family, owners of the brewery 'De Sleutel' and largest employer in the village.
Daughter Odile married Professor Scharpé in 1928 and the couple moved into the 'watermill'.
Professor Scharpé was known at the University of Leuven for his sympathy for the complaints of the pro-Flemish students and as a result regularly clashed with university policy. In 1909, for example, he defended writer Ernest Claes after he had been thrown out of the university by 'seditious' writings. After he was reprimanded by Cardinal Van Roey in 1926 for participating in a forbidden amnesty demonstration, he withdrew from public life.
Professor Scharpé would die in Betekom in 1935, but the next two generations remained the owners of the house now known as the 'Scharpé House'.

Jan Rymenams