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About this building
In the quiet hamlet of Oeren, near Alveringem, stands the church of Saint Apollonia, once the parish church of the village. It was raised in the sixteenth century in late-Gothic brick, yet its walls still hold remnants of an older Romanesque church built in ironstone: two ages woven into a single building.
After the Concordat of 1802 the parishes of Alveringem and Oeren were united, and in 1808 the church was reduced to the rank of a chapel. It remained, however, a place of remembrance: from 1915 Belgian soldiers fallen in the First World War were buried around it, and so the Belgian...
In the quiet hamlet of Oeren, near Alveringem, stands the church of Saint Apollonia, once the parish church of the village. It was raised in the sixteenth century in late-Gothic brick, yet its walls still hold remnants of an older Romanesque church built in ironstone: two ages woven into a single building.
After the Concordat of 1802 the parishes of Alveringem and Oeren were united, and in 1808 the church was reduced to the rank of a chapel. It remained, however, a place of remembrance: from 1915 Belgian soldiers fallen in the First World War were buried around it, and so the Belgian military cemetery of Oeren came into being. In 1965 a stained-glass window by Ivo Bakelants was set in their memory.
The church has a heavy western tower with a brick spire, a three-aisled nave and a lower, single-aisled choir. Its neo-Gothic furnishings include a statue of Saint Apollonia, to whom the building is dedicated. The church is a protected monument.
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