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Updated: June 17, 2025
Behind these dwelling-places the bold flying buttresses of the Church of Ste. Walburge, whose relics were brought to Furnes by Judith, wife of Baldwin Bras-de-Fer, and the tower of St. Nicholas, lift themselves on the north and east; and close together in a corner to the west are the dark gray Hôtel de Ville and Palais de Justice, in a room of which the judges of the Inquisition used to sit.
Yet the town is one of great antiquity and renown, its origin lost in the dimness of the ages. According to the chronicles in the great Library at Bruges, as early as A.D. 800 it was the theatre of invasions and massacres by the Normans. The War of the "Deux Roses" was fought outside the walls here, likewise the Battle of the Spurs took place on the plains between Furnes and Ypres.
But the King of the Belgians, and Baron de Broqueville, Prime minister of Belgium, had been watching their work, and refused to move them. One morning we came into the dining-room of our Convent Hospital at Furnes, and there on a stretcher on the floor was a girl sleeping profoundly.
Madame Curie was an indefatigable worker, and in a very short time had taken radiographs of all the cases which we could place at her disposal, and, indeed, we ransacked all the hospitals in Furnes, for when they heard of her arrival, they were only too glad to make use of the opportunity.
Outside of this, the Grand' Place, and the old red brick tower of St. Nicholas, so scorched by the sun and beaten by the elements, and the rows of quaint gabled houses beneath, Furnes has little to offer to the seeker after antiquity.
Here were women and children, innocent victims when the peaceful nearby market town of Furnes was being shelled; here was a telegraph operator who had stuck to his post under furious bombardment until both his legs were crushed. He had been decorated by the king for his bravery.
The archers, or constables, in charge of the slaves took them through Ypres and Furnes; and as the distance is about twelve leagues, it was not till the third day that Tristram saw the spires and fortifications of Dunkirk rising against the greyish sea.
Adinkerque, a picturesque village beyond Furnes, is another place which calls to mind many a picture of the Flemish artists in the Musée of Antwerp and the Mauritshuis at The Hague; and the recesses of the dune country in which these places are hidden has a wonderful fascination about it the irregular outlines of the dunes, some high and some low, sinking here into deep hollows of firm sand, and rising there into strange fantastic shapes, sometimes with sides like small precipices on which nothing can grow, and sometimes sloping gently downwards and covered with trembling poplars, spread in confusion on every side.
They were shelling Furnes again when I was at Steenkerke the other day, and it was a strange sound to hear the shells whizzing over the peaceful fields. One heard them coming, and they passed overhead to fall on the old town. Under them the brown cattle fed unheeding, and old women hoed undisturbed, and the sinking sun threw long shadows on the grass.
Five nuns who had fled from Eastern Belgium they had come, I think, from a convent near Louvain had taken refuge in the school in Furnes in which we were established. When we were ordered to go to Poperinghe, they begged to be allowed to accompany us, and we took them with us in the ambulances.
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