It suffered much,
like its neighbours, from wars and revolutions,[*] and is now one
of the quietest of the Flemish towns. The market-place is a small
square, quaintly picturesque, surrounded by clusters of little
brick houses with red and blue tiled roofs, low-stepped gables,
and deep mouldings round the windows. Behind these dwelling-places
the bold flying buttresses of the Church of Ste. Walburge, whose
relics were brought to Furnes by Judith, wife of Baldwin Bras-de-Fer,
and the tower of St. Nicholas, lift themselves on the north and
east; and close together in a corner to the west are the dark gray
Hotel de Ville and Palais de Justice, in a room of which the judges
of the Inquisition used to sit.
[Footnote *: 'Furnes etait devenue un _oppidium_, aux termes d'une
charte de 1183, qui avait a se defendre a la fois contre les incursions
des etrangers et les attaques d'une population "indocile et cruelle,"
comme l'appelle l'Abbe de Saint Riquier Hariulf, toujours dechiree
par les factions et toujours prete a la revolte.'--GILLIODTS VAN
SEVEREN: _Recueil des Anciennes Coutumes de la Belgique; Quartier
de Furnes_, vol. i., p. 28.]
[Illustration: FURNES. Grand Place and Belfry.]
Though some features are common to nearly all the Flemish towns--the
market-place, the belfry, the Hotel de Ville, the old gateways,
and the churches, with their cherished paintings--yet each of them
has generally some association of its own.
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