Solvay field

the Field Solvay is a public park located in the commune of Hulpe in Walloon region, Belgium. It concerns the major Patrimoine of Wallonia. The Solvay field extends on 227 hectares from wood, lawns and ponds. One counts there more than 450 species of wild plants (ferns and plants with flower), 130 species of hepatic foams and , as well as many remarkable trees.

Air sight of the Castle in the field (and other castles of Wallonia): == Histoire of the domaine==

The shortly after independence, the General society of Belgium on sale puts public most of its land and buildings, that is to say 28.000 hectares of which close to moist to forests, with an aim of releasing from the liquidities intended to finance the industrialization of the Belgian State. Between 1831 and 1836, the Forêt of Look after thus loses the 3/5e its surface, passing from 11.500 to 4.694 hectares.

With Hulpe, the Marquis Maximilien of Béthune buys 341 hectares of forest, which it partially makes clear to arrange a park there. It calls upon the architect Jean-Pierre Cluysenaar, for the construction of three houses of guard, and two farms, the farm of Zondael in the south (1836) and the firm Red in north (1838). He undertakes then the construction of the castle (completed in 1842), whose he entrusts the realization to the French architect Jean-Jacques Arveuf and to the Belgian Jean-François Coppens. Set up at the top of the hill, of Flemish style Néo-rebirth very snuffed at the time, the avoided red brick castle with natural stone lines is flanked of four turns of angles octagonal placed at the four cardinal corners and of four intermediate turrets higher than the unit. The marshy ground of the bottom of the hill is transformed into pond.

Of 1871 with 1893, the field becomes the property of Antoine de Roest d' Alkemade who increases it in the south until his current limits by acquiring meadows, the banks of the Argentine and the ponds of Nysdam.

In 1893, the industrialist Ernest Solvay buys the property to make its residence of summer of it. He entrusts to Victor Horta the responsibility to re-examine interior installations of the castle, to modernize it and to draw the luminaries and furniture of it. One installs there electricity, gas, running water and telephone. A terrace is arranged in frontage, surmounted of a glazed marchioness with cast iron columns. Ernest Solvay makes build a second castle near the firm red, the castle of the Long Fund which will be demolished in the years 1960, and refit the park. It still increased the field which reaches in 1920, 420 hectares.

Solvay bequeaths its goods of sound living to his/her children. The field of Hulpe is divided between its two sons, Edmond receives the northern part, which includes/understands the castle of the Long Fund and the firm red, Armand, the groin, the principal castle, the farm of Zondael and the low part of the property, whose whole constitutes current the Solvay field.

Armand Solvay then his son, Ernest-John Solvay carries out important installations of the field which will give him its current configuration. The architect Georges Collin modifies the aspect of the castle considerably. The turrets, the central pinnacle and the marchioness are removed, the arrows of the turns are shortened, the red brick is covered with a clear coating. The building loses its vertical lines for a lower and horizontal silhouette. Ernest-John, makes build a view-point to which a staircase of 140 steps carries out. A garden with the Frenchwoman is created on a side of the castle, vis-a-vis the principal frontage a turfed rectilinear opening of 800 meters through the forest ends in a 36 height meters obelisk overcome by a gilded sun. It makes plant the majority of the exotic species today still present.

Worried by the prospect for a future parcelling out of the field, it obtains its classification in 1963 and decides a few years later to make gift in the State of it. The donation become effective in 1972 the cultural Fondation Solvay is created and the field immediately opened with the public. This legacy, disputed by part of the heirs, gives place to a long lawsuit at the conclusion which the plaintiffs recover the property of most of the field. Pushed by the public opinion and an association of the Friends of the Solvay park whose petition in favor of the maintenance of the opening to the public of the whole of the park joined together 32.000 signatures, the Walloon region is forced to repurchase the whole for the sum of 5 million euros.

The castle and the farm, unoccupied since 1971, are restored in 1982 with the expenses of the French Communauté of Belgium. The farm is partly occupied by a bar, the barns are accesses arranged to accommodate exposures and concerts, then since 1999 the Foundation Jean-Michel Folon which exposes more than 300 works of the artist.

Fauna

Fauna is composed of roe-deers, bats, field voles, foxes, shrews, hermines, Putois, bedlettes, hares, squirrels and of discrete birds: crested martins-pâcheurs, grèbes, grèbes castagneux, water rails, fuligules pochards, teals of winter.

Ponds

The ponds, established on impermeable clay yprésienne see their muddy zones invaded by roselières and cariçaies. One sees there to fly away in summer more than 20 kinds of dragonflies and young ladies

Trees

The park (which is only not very visible on the illustrations of this page) contains in its wood of the beeches and the indigenous oaks. One also finds there:

the tree with the small pockets, thus called because its inflorescences is surrounded by large a yellow Spathe of color. * the giant Sequoia which can exceed 100 meters and live thousands of years
the tree with the forty ecus tree of the Pagodes, alive fossil existan, T already with the Jurassic
the Cyprès bald person, conifer with the null and void foliage which takes a very beautiful color with the autumn
the Séquoia of China

Grass and flowers

A small brook named the Argentine crosses the field and its banks lodge a vegetation of tall grasses: officinal Valerian , officinal Consound, Queen of the meadows, Morelle soft-bitter, Eupatoire chanvrine, Market-gardening Cirse , épilobe roughcast.

Other indigenous plants push there such including two delicate orchises, the Ophrys bee, the Orchis tâcheté of wood, a lycopodaciée in the process of disappearance in Wallonia, the Lycopode out of bludgeon.

The remarkable decorative species are planted at various places of the field, such:

the matteucie with wings of ostrich: in fact the beautiful sheets of this fern known in Wallonia in only one locality were worth this name
to him the royal Osmonde that one finds in Campine, in Ardenne and the Brabant
large Télékie whose yellow flowerheads decorates the edges of the pond of the Long Tail .

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