A little bit of history...

In this section, you will find information about the farm, the village, the Gobertange stone. Documentation and additional information available on site.

The farm

Also called the Ferme Fortemps (20th century) or Ferme Quinot (19th century) after the families who worked there as farmers, La Cense is a quadrilateral farm, located on the Place de Mélin and mainly built from ""Gobertange"" stone and bricks.

The buildings are mainly from the 17th to the 19th century. They feature the various functions of the farms of yesteryear: entrance through a porch with dovecote, paved courtyard with central part formerly reserved for manure, the main building, the stables, the well, the barn, the bread oven as well as what remains of the stables and pigsties. As the buildings no longer meet the expectations of current farms, the farm is no longer in operation.

Florence and Serge acquired the farm in 1987 in a dilapidated state. After 2 years of hard work, they settled with their children in 1989 in a first part. Over the years, with perseverance, different parts were successively restored while respecting the old building.

A lover of white stone and combinations with red brick, Serge was among the founders of Qualité Village Mélin, an association whose objective is the protection of architectural and landscape heritage as well as the promotion of community life in the village.

Mélin & the Gobertange stone

The Gobertange stone is a white sandstone limestone found between Jodoigne and Hoegaarden and corresponds to a deposit during the Middle Lutetian, about 48 million years ago, at a time when the area was a shallow and rather tropical marine bay. The stones are found in a sand bed at an average depth of 9 to 25 meters.

It was extracted for a long time in an artisanal way by means of wells/bures, donkeys and galleries. Today, there remains only an open-cast mining area in the hamlet of Hussompont. The extraction work is done occasionally with cranes and trucks.

The stone was used for the construction of a good number of buildings in Lathuy, Mélin, Gobertange, St Remy-Geest, and important buildings in the region: Château Pastur, Hotel des Libertés, la Vicomté, Eglise St Médard in Jodoigne,… Collegiate Church of Tirlemont,…

It was also used for many buildings across the country: Brussels City Hall, St Michel & Gudule in Brussels, St Pierre Cathedral in Leuven, etc.

THE WHITE VALLEY

The Vallée Blanche is the name often given to all the surrounding villages whose homes were built with the local white stone.

These include the villages/hamlets of: Lathuy, Mélin, Gobertange, St Remy-Geest where the extraction mainly took place, without forgetting Jodoigne, Ste Marie Geest, St Jean-Geest, Mont-à-Lumay, Zetrud-Lumay whose old buildings are also composed entirely or partly of white stone.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL VILLAGES IN WALLONIA

The association "Les Plus Beaux Villages de Wallonie" was created in 1994 by Mr. Alain COLLIN (living at that time in the village of Chardeneux) to promote the identity of the rural regions of Wallonia. The diversity of its landscapes and traditional buildings constitutes an exceptional and privileged natural and architectural heritage, which the association wants to preserve and invite to discover. It has a network of 33 labeled villages among the 8 landscape regions of Wallonia. To find out more: https://beauxvillages.be

ASBL Quality Village Mélin

To find out more about Mélin and its news, visit the site and the Qualité Village Mélin Facebook page .