Well, I've been able to change the colours of a couple of dots on my map:
I have to start by reporting a dead end, unfortunately. The Inventaris Onroerend Erfgoed had led me to believe that there might be a Hansche ceiling actually in our commune, over in Blanden. After diligent research I was able to get in touch with the owners, who however denied ( Read more... )

I ventured into darkest Wallonia yeteday, to find another example of the ceiling work of 17th century stucco artist Jan Christian Hansche. This was in the church of St Remigius, Saint Rémi locally, in the village of Franc-Waret near Namur. It’s the least well-known of Hansche’s work - I found it not on a Belgian site but in the Netherlands ( Read more... )

Today being a public holiday, I successfully persuaded the family to go for a trip to the lower Ardennes, specifically to the château at Modave, the far side of Huy, just where the landscape starts to get interesting. My reason for this goes back to the summer, when I was wowed by the stucco ceilings inside the Park Abbey near Leuven, created by ( Read more... )

Second paragraph of third chapter (Sura 114 of the Qur'an, in Dutch in the book but I'm giving both the Arabic original - the Warsh recitation, which is used in Morocco - and the English translation):

Zeg: ‘Ik zoek bescherming bij de Heer van de mensen. De Koning van de mensen. De God van de mensen. Tegen het kwaad van de wegsluipende ( Read more... )

Today is Open Monument Day in Flanders, but it caught me a little by surprise and I was too late to book tickets for the one thing I really really wanted to see, the stucco ceilings of Jan Christian Hansche at Beaulieu Castle in Machelen near Brussels. Apart from that, my tastes run to the ancient rather than modern, and the most promising Roman- ( Read more... )

Third paragraph of The life and adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies, commonly call'd Mother Ross; who, in several campaigns under King William and the late Duke of Marlborough, in the quality of a foot-soldier and dragoon, gave many signal proofs of an unparallell'd courage and personal bravery, taken from her own mouth when a pensioner of Chelsea- ( Read more... )

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If you’re within reach of Leuven, and on the look-out for something a bit different to do this weekend, you could do worse than visiting the Abdij van Park, south of the city. We know it well - Anne actually volunteered in the museum for a few months, a couple of years ago. I started a videoblog entry about it last summer, but never completed it; ( Read more... )

I discovered by chance during the week that there are two very ancient churches in villages near us. I find this fascinating. Although one thinks of Ireland as a place with a lot of ancient history, in fact there are not a lot of ancient buildings which are still in use. In the town of my birth, Belfast, the title of Oldest Building is disputed ( Read more... )

Beautiful Merovingian metalwork from a very nice exhibition, "The World of Clovis", in the Royal Museum at Mariemont, of which I was previously unaware. There's lots of other lovely material there, but it was the metalwork that really caught my eye - here are two fibluæ, a reliquary and some rings and things. These last are from a grave known as ( Read more... )