Nos événements

On the Heldenplein at Oostham rises the church of the Nativity of Our Lady, whose tower base is reckoned among the oldest in Belgium. As early as the eighth century a small church stood here; around 900 it was replaced by a sturdier building of iron sandstone, whose foundations came to light in 1940. The lower part of the square tower, laid in opus spicatum, still dates back to the tenth century.

Under the Abbey of Averbode the church grew in the fourteenth century with a late-Gothic choir and transept; in 1603 it was widened into a pseudo-basilica. After repairs in the eighteenth century and alterations in 1836-1839, a new neo-Gothic nave was raised in 1934. Yet fire destroyed the building on 11 May 1940; only the outer walls and the tower remained standing, before the reconstruction of 1956 to 1958.

Despite everything, the church preserves a rich array of statues: nineteen wooden figures of saints, mostly of the sixteenth century, several attributed to the Master of Ham, together with a wooden Saint Christopher, a Gothic Man of Sorrows of the fifteenth century, and a processional Madonna. The church is a protected monument.