YPRES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1334, 8 December 1914, Page 4

YPRES.

Ypres (pronounced “Eepr”) is in westernmost Flanders, ten miles from the French frontier and 25 miles from the coast opposite Dover at Dunkirk. It is one of the most interesting of West Flanders cities. Surrounding it are yet to be found traces of the ancient fortifications, and twothirds of the place are still encircled by ancient ramparts and a wide moat. In the eleventh century the cloth workers of Ypres were famous, and they remained so until the siege of the town and the burning of the suburbs by the aggressive burghers of Ghent in 1383. It had then a population of 200,000, with 4,000 cloth looms constantly at work, but by the end of the fifteenth century the population, owing to the devastation of plagues and sieges, had fallen to about 15,000. In the following century it was taken lour limes by the French, who held it for about 75 years. The town was famous for the Hotel de Ville and the Cloth Hall (now destroyed), which, standing under one root, formed one of the largest buildings ot the kind in Belgium. It was begun by Count Baldwin of Flanders in the first year of the thirteenth century. Above it rose the tower which served the town as a beltry, a fine and impressive building with an octagonal spire of exquisite proportions. The most notable church was the Cathedral of St. Martin, founded by Robert Le Prison in 1073.