In the wake of Merovingians, Romans and Ferrari land measurers

In the early 1900s, a loud curse probably echoed in the Kempen valley of the Kleine Nete and the Aa. In Steenbergstraat, the carpenter wanted to expand his workshop. His shovel went no deeper than half a meter into the ground. It was full of stones... Not just ordinary stones, but centuries-old Roman 'souvenirs'. That Grobbendonk had once been a Roman settlement was already known in the Middle Ages. For example, Gaspar Schetz, the lord of Grobbendonk in the 16th century, possessed a treasure of Roman coins and bronze figurines. In 1908, amateur archaeologist Louis Stroobant uncovered traces of a Roman settlement at Steenberg. During the walk described here, you will discover how people in Grobbendonk lived during the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Roman period, and the Middle Ages. First, you walk past the place where the Roman village, the vicus, once stood. Through the Molenbos, marked on the Ferraris map, you will reach a castle farm that was part of the Schetz castle. This water castle had – apart from a tower – already disappeared when the land surveyors of De Ferraris came by in 1777. In the meantime, that castle tower, which is shown on the Ferraris map, has also been demolished. Through the photogenic water mill built in the Middle Ages at the confluence of Nete and Aa, you return to the center of Grobbendonk with its triangular municipal square.