Sint-Gertrudis

In the Margote district of Wichelen, the Church of Saint Gertrude raises its forty-eight-metre tower above the village. The present building, aisled and without a transept, was consecrated in 1873, yet the roots of the parish reach far deeper.

The earlier Church of Saint Gertrude, closer to the Scheldt, was a Romanesque church of the twelfth or early thirteenth century, built of Tournai limestone in the regional Scheldt style. For centuries the altar of Wichelen fell under the Abbey of Nivelles. After a long dispute that divided the village, the decaying Romanesque church was demolished in 1870; its rubble served as the foundation of the new church, and precious furnishings — the pulpit, the confessionals and the sixteenth-century font — moved with it.

The new church was designed by Edmund Serrure the elder. Work began in 1870, the tower was finished in the summer of 1872, and on 28 July 1873 the bishop of Ghent, Bracq, consecrated it. In October 1914 the spire was shot down; its restoration came only in 1926, in an altered form.