Église Saint-Omer

English translation

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History

The church of Saint-Omer of Staple belongs to the typology of hall churches or hallekerke. The generalization of this form typical of the Westhoek is representative of the turbulent history of the region, as it is linked to the reconstruction of buildings vandalized in the 16th century during the Eighty Years' War. Formally, these churches often incorporate Romanesque parts or materials. The parts built during the reconstruction testify to the persistence of the Gothic style in the region until the 17th century. They adopt the use of large colourless openings and very airy interior volumes, covered by roof structures of timber rather than masonry. Only notable differences are the materials and the polychromy resulting from them: sand bricks in maritime Flanders, red bricks or limestone in the Houtland lands. The interior decoration of hallekerkes is generally of fine quality, and representative of the evolution of taste as it was continuously embellished over the centuries. This is the case at Staple, and two series of protections as objects, detailed above, indeed recognized its interest as early as 1970. A building which has been subject to regular repairs throughout the centuries to ensure its preservation, the church of Staple was itself remodelled several times between the 12th and 19th centuries. The whole is however very coherent, its volumetry remaining that of the reconstruction begun in the 16th century. It also presents certain interest, as a representative example of Flemish hall churches of the Westhoek, which are characterized by campaigns of enlargement and reconstruction on a Romanesque base, with the use of local materials (sandstone and brick), a Gothic vocabulary preserved by the restorations and embellishments of the 19th century, which are themselves of fine quality (in particular the stained glass windows by Latteux and Bazin), and forms of decoration typical of Flanders (colourless stained glass windows and on the exterior motifs and inscriptions in contrasting brick).