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Dudzele
To reach Dudzele, you only need 5 minutes by car from the center of Damme. Starting from the market square of Damme, you cross the Damse Vaart and a bit furtheron, you only have to follow the signs. Don't forget to enjoy the beautiful polder landscape. If you continue a bit further, you will end up in Lissewege. Worth seeing: Romanesque tower, 17th century houses |
There
is something remarkable about Dudzele: the village has 2 church towers.
One church but two towers. You needn't be an acheologist to see that the
tower that stands alone is the older one. That tower is built in
Romanesque style and dates back to the 12th century. The actual church was
only built in 1871; parts of it still originate from the 17th
century. The Romanesque tower was in
fact not the real church tower of Dudzele's old and dissapeared
church. No, he was just one of the corner towers. It must have been
a pretty large church. She was constructed between 1150 and 1200 and torn
down in 1634. But why did they leave this one tower standing? In the
16th century the church was plundered; just like most of the villages and towns
in Flanders, Dudzele fell pray to the destructive Geuzen (protestant religious
warriors). Besides the entry of the church stands a chapel in Neogothic
style in remembrance of the casualties of World War I.
Dudzele
is old, in 704 a domain (called Dudece) was given as a gift to the St.-Pieters
abbey of Ghent. Several 'military' constructions stood in the vecinity of
the village center such as: Schottencastle, manor Hof van Grammez, the castle of
Dudzele, castle Pathoeke and fortress Pathoeke. There isn't much left of
it. You'd think that foreign armies in the Middle Ages are to blame for
this. Not quite. Not too far from the center, in the direction of 
A
number of pretty houses ornament the center of the village such as the old
'smisse' (forge) next to the church. On the other side of the church you
can see a few houses from the 17th century which are called Pronckenburgh, Bona
Dies and Priesterage. The last one stands next to a small park in which
you can find the statue of Amaat Vyncke. 
A
bit further, on the outskirts of the village stands the Schottenhof. In
the facade stands the number 1639. This house is a nice example of how
people used to build and how villages came into existence in an age when the
land was largely inaccessible and inundated regularly. It stands namely on
what is called a 'terp' and is surrounded by a ditch. A 'terp' is actually
a piece of higher land on which the shepherds could safely retreat in case of
need (especially when there was a flood). These 'terps' were lateron
connected to eachother by small dikes, which created villages which in their
turn were connected again to eachother with small dikes. 'Zele' has the
same meaning as 'terp'. So we could say that Dudzele was the 'terp' of a
farmer called Duda.