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Updated: May 21, 2025
Speaking of the rich decorations which the Van den Gheyns and Hemony lavished on their bells, he says, "The decorations worked in bas relief around some of the old bells are extremely beautiful, while the inscriptions are often highly suggestive, and even touching."
He showed me the huge "tambour-carillon," with barrels all bestudded with little brass pegs which pull the wires connected with the great hammers, which in their turn strike the forty-six bells, that unrivaled chime known throughout Flanders as the master work of the Van den Gheyns of Louvain, who were, as already told, the greatest bell founders of the age.
During the later years of the seventeenth century, the Van den Gheyns seem to have quitted the town, seeking their fortunes elsewhere, for the foundry passed into other and less competent hands. In Malines dwelt the Primate of Belgium, the now celebrated Cardinal Mercier, whose courageous attitude in the face of the invaders has aroused the admiration of the whole civilized world.
This, the most notable edifice in the town, is a fine Gothic tower one hundred and fifty feet high, with a remarkable construction of tower and turrets, supported by corbels of the fifteenth century, containing a fine chime of bells made by the Van den Gheyns.
Martin's, which enshrined a most wondrous Jube, or altar screen, and a chime of bells from the workshop of the Van den Gheyns. There was likewise on the Grand' Place, a fine old prison of the fourteenth century, its windows all closed with rusty iron bars, most of which were loose in the stones.
He gives the date of 1620, as that when the family of Van den Gheyns were bringing the art of bell founding to perfection in Louvain, and notes that the tower and bells of each fortified town were half civic property. Thus the curfew, the carolus, and the St. Mary bells in Antwerp Cathedral belong to the town.
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