Melin
Hesbaye

6 km from Jodoigne , Melin is one of 5 white villages shrouded by the trees of its overgrown gardens. The village lies in an area of rich fields, an open and hilly countryside dotted with woods.

Province: Walloon Brabant
City: Jodoigne

Have you seen the Brussels town hall on the Grand Place? The Gobertange stones it is made of where extracted here. The village is made up of this luxurious material, with toutches of localy produced bricks. The Gobertange creek wanders lazily though the village, dams dotting the gardens with ponds and bridges.  its banks drained by high rows of willows and poplars. Wandering through the remaing cobblestone paths that start from the small triangular square, you will discover farms large and small, loosely clustered around the church. 

© Photographies: 1 Christian Collet / 10 Gérard Michel / 3 Qualité Village Mélin / 2,4-9,13 Mark Rossignol / 11 François Delfosse

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Hesbaye

Landscape

This large landscape takes its roots in the north side of the industrial valley, like the hennuyer and brabançon silty plateaux, which it shares its main characteristics with. This low plateaux area shows a flat, or slightly riddled area, covered with broad farmings, open on faraway views. Only the downstreams of the Orneau, the Mehaigne, the Burdinale and the Geer show a more pronounced sidedness in the Hesbaye's plateau giving to these valleys a particular landscape.

The thick and well-watered silty overlay assures a great ground quality. This underground richness causes, at the surface, a large domination of plowing over livestock raising. These ample areas draw together a giant plowing puzzle in an openfield landscape. This space organisation is defined by the almost exclusive presence of plowings, and the lack of fences around the fields. Except for some isolated big farms, most of the habitat is grouped in "village-stacks", carefully placed away from the rich grounds, guaranteeing a nice agricultural production.  Put aside to a more "complementary" role, meadows are grouped in the bottom of wetter valleys. Woods, rarer as well, remain in the steeper slopes of the valleys or on poor quality grounds.

Sources : FRW - CPDT

Traditional countryside habitat

Most of Hesbaye's buildings are made of a long, low volume underneath a steep roof, like in the hennuyer and brabançon plateaux. Houses were gradually heightened of a half, than an entire floor. Outside of villages, the habitat is spread around the landscape. It is made of farms of various dimensions, from the "block" house, built as one unit, to the farm with a closed yard, defined by the orientation of the buildings and annexes towards one another. Big quadrilateral farms are often introduced in the landscape by an impressive entrance porch.

The association of the dark red tones of bricks and the orange ones of tiles clothe the majority of Hesbaye's houses. Grey tiles, colorful covering and local stone complete this color range in harmony, bringing their own shades and textures. In the north-west of the Hesbaye, the use of the "stone of Gobertange", in the basements, quoins and framings, offers a variety of colors, mixing the light beige of stones to the orange red shades of bricks and tiles.

Sources : FRW - CPDT

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