For centuries, Ghent has been a major landowner, particularly outside the city’s boundaries. Today, the city still owns around 1,800 hectares of agricultural land, but at one time, this amounted to more than 5,000 hectares, consisting of fields, meadows, and forests. The exhibition ‘Ghent’s Land’ at the STAM (2024) highlighted the 800-year history of this impressive landownership.
One of the highlights of the exhibition was this boundary marker, which was donated to the museum. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, such markers indicated the boundaries of the properties of the civil hospitals ‘Burgerlijke Godshuizen’ – the predecessors of the Public Centre for Social Welfare of Ghent – in Zeelandic-Flanders, between Axel and Hulst. Most of these boundary markers have since been destroyed or disappeared into the ground or ditches.
In addition to the boundary marker, the STAM was able to acquire another special item for its collection: the uniform of forester Maurice De Wulf. From 1955 to 1990, he managed the ‘Kloosterbos’ in Wachtebeke, which was then still owned by the Ghent PCSW.
In the photo below, Maurice (right) poses next to his brother Georges (left), both foresters. His uniform clearly bears the stamp of his employer.
Foresters Maurice and Georges De Wulf, 1980s © Jacques De Schryver
