Clermont-sur-Berwinne
Land of Herve

Does the Church or the marketplace dominate the hill? or would it be the town hall? The cobbelstones won't make you trip, but won't give you a definite answer...

Province: Liège
City: Thimister-Clermont

Place de la Halle is an open book detailing the styles of architecture that marked the last few centuries. In different forms, the most representative elements are brick with whitened linestone outlining the doors and windows, floors and angles. The roofs are lined with their decorative slates.  One of the centers of attraction of the village is the town hall rebuilt in the late 19th century, while inspired by historic architectural styles, it is still regarded as a new element, namely the pepperpot tower.

Given the commercial nature of village activities, few barns are line the central sqare. The homes overlooking its surroundings, are simple or elegant. The ensemble is harmonious despite the diversity of styles. At the corner of the church, the porch and the defensive tower, ruins of the castle and farm built in 1635. A few hundred steps from the village, amidst groves and orchards, surrounded here and there with remaining hedgerows, you will discover the Crawhez castle and the Castle farm of Aguesse that will lead your to the old railwayline, today reserved for pedistrians and biclycles.

© Photographies: 9,15 Gérard Michel / 1-3,5-7,10-11,13-14,16-17 Mark Rossignol / 4, 8,12 François Delfosse

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Land of Herve

Landscape

The Land of Herve is covers the south of the Meuse, beyond Liège, and stops near the Vesdre. Several streams have sculpted this landscape frame as a succession of plateaux and depressions with wet bottoms. The underground, made of compact and waterproof clay sediments, is the cause of such soaking wet grounds, more friendly to meadows than to farmings. From the higher points, one's look get lost in an ample verdant panorama, which hedges, going through the fields and the isolated farms, draw the main lines of the landscape.

This typical green grid of the Land of Herve is revealing a bocage-type of landscape. This agrair structure means a closed landscape where meadows, surrounded by hedges, are dominant. Older orchards with high stems punctuate the meadows and are grouped around builded areas. Beyond the village core, the habitat diverges and spreads itself in the landscape, without any obvious ordre, in little farms isolated in their terroir. The frequency of cares that must be brought to the livestock, as well as the multitude of springs explain this almost total spreading out of houses, revelator of the Land of Herve. Roads and ways make a dense spidernet shaped traffic and connect the different farms of the village to one another, s well as to the main communication lines. As nowhere else in Wallonia, the Land of Herve is THE example of Bocage landscape. Today, this singularity of such landscape is in its way of degradation.

From farming to raising, birth of the landscape of Herve

Two fundamental variables rushed the conversion to livestock raising and deeply transform the face of the Land of Herve. First, in the 16nth century, Charles V (catholic) took strategic and economic measures, forbidding the inhabitants to export crops and cereals to the protestants in the north. Secondly, the "tithe", part due to the Christian Church from agricultural income, was not applying on meadowing production, unlike on farming production. This mutation of the rural economy brought a splitting of the habitat, with farms spread out in the meadows with wet grounds, nice for great quality grass. In order to contain the livestock, hedges came to naturally close the different fields and create vegetal chess board, at the scale of the landscape. Finally, during the 17nth century, fruit trees appeared in the bocage and started participating to the landscape identity of the Land of Herve.

Sources : FRW - CPDT

Traditional coutryside habitat

Houses in the Land of Herve offer a great variety of shapes, which depend on the size of the exploitation and diversity of activities. With its simple volume and yet impressive look, the house has a rectangle plane where the living unit and stable are packed underneath the same roof. Usually made of two floors, sometimes two and a half, the building is topped by a steep roof. Frequently, annexes were added to the main building or in parallel to it, thus uncovering a closed or open yard near the road.

Unlike farms, which are spread out in the landscape, houses of the village core, closely attached along the streets, offer to one's look a more city-like appearance, due to the composition and organisation of their facades. With a great range of colours and textures, it looks as if the houses were making fun of contrast and materials: anthracite grey tiles or more orange red ones for the roofs, masonry works made of either brown red bricks or beige sandstone, framings in woods, wattle and daub or bricks, chainings of light grey limestone, punctuated by some white covering... all participate to the architectural status of the Land of Herve.

Sources : FRW - CPDT

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