Granges domestiques, basses-cours et fermes abbatiales : évolution typologique et architecturale en Belgique

The agricultural area inside the abbey enclosure is an indispensable, yet often poorly understood, aspect of an abbey. Its typological evolution from the Middle Ages to the early 21st century, as well as its material and symbolic significance, are examined here from examples documented or preserved in Belgium: Cistercian abbeys of both men and women, and Norbertine and benedictine abbeys. Questions about the spatial organisation of domestic agricultural areas and their architecture can be defined in four main phases, each having a different economic context: 1. the medieval "domestic grange" and its relationship to the rest of the domain; 2. from the end of the Middle Ages, a "home farm" with all the aspects of a lordly manor; 3. a new type of "abbey farm" dating from the mid-18th c. onward; 4. farms belonging to abbeys that were re-established or founded in the 19th or 20th centuries without the immense agricultural domains of earlier times.

Jaar van publicatie:2013