Most European nations had their agents and exchanges in Ypres. Between 1260 and 1304 its Draper Guild built itself a Hall, later called the Lakenhall or Cloth Hall, one of the largest and most beautiful secular monuments of the Middle Ages in Europe. In the surrounding province of West Flanders however, the wool supplies were insufficient to satisfy the needs of the trade and the merchants: and England became the principal supplier. During the fourteenth century, the prosperity of Ieper declined and it became involved in civil war and in wars between England and France, suffering a two months siege by the English (under the command of the Bishop of Norwich) in 1383. So much damage was done during the siege that a large number of weavers and others who left in the ensuing two hundred years settled in England.
It was ironic that the weavers of Ieper taught the English the craft of weaving add, with such plentiful supplies of wool in England, the English cloth industry largely replaced the Flemish one. As the Cloth Hall of Ieper became a memorial ofa once prosperous trade, e English cloth merchants carried on their business in the new cloth halls of Lavenham and other places in East Anglia. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Ieper changed from a commercial centre to a fortress town, with its impressive fortifications along the ramparts constructed by Marshal Vauban. 1914-1918 By 1914 Ieper was a quiet town of 18,000 inhabitants, proud of their ancient buildings which were silent witness of old-time wealth and prosperity. In October 1914 the Germans occupied the town for a few days; for the remainder of the war it remained in Allied hands and the Ieper Salient become synonymous with bravery, suffering and sacrifice on a scale unsurpassed before or since. Ieper and Passchendaele became written into history as Crecy and Agincourt had been. At the end of the war Ieper lay wholly in ruins, its Cloth Hall, Cathedral and many other buildings gutted by fire, the remainder of the town destroyed by constant shelling. In its environs and in the Salient, 500,000 men had died; and the 160 Commonwealth war cemeteries around Ieper stand as silent testimony to their sacrifice, gardens of peace and in a landscape potted and marked by the bitterness of war. |
St. George’s Church The rebuilding of Ieper in exactly the same style as in 1914, became a national effort of the Belgian nation. Field Marshal Sir John French, Earl of Ypres, who had commanded the armies in 1914, appealed for a British memorial church. Land in Elverdingestraat, nearly opposite the cathedral (St. Martins), was granted by the town Ieper and Field Marshal Lord Plumer laid the foundation stone on Sunday 24th 1927, a few minutes after the dedication of the Menin Gate Memorial to those who have no know grave. The church was dedicated and opened for worship by the Bishop of Fulham on March 24th 1929. In addition to the church, a Pilgrims’ Hall and a vicarage were built. Eton College paid for the building of a school for the children of the British community; in 1938 there were ninety-eight children in the school. Since 1945 the church has served as the memorial church for all who fought and all who died in Flanders in both world wars, remembering that many thousands of British and Commonwealth soldiers passed through Ieper in the retreat to Dunkirk in May 1940 and also in the period following its liberation on 6th September, 1944.
Nearly every item in the church has been given in memory of either an individual or a regiment. From the day of its opening, however, the church has been a living worshipping church for the British community resident in the area and the many thousand of pilgrims who come to Flanders from all parts of the world. Within its walls, many find an inexplicable peace in which private prayer and public worship enable them to be reminded of the suffering and the sacrifice of those it commemorates. The number of visitors increases each year; Apart from individuals and regimental associations, there is an increased number of school parties as children of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 in their history syllabuses. Services are held every Sunday at 18.00hrs. with additional services as necessary.
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