The time when Sint-Joris-ten-Distel was known as the Lattenklieversdorp is long gone. The lath splitting industry started around the end of the 19th century and flourished during the first three decades of the 20th century. It was also a period that, despite the amount of work and toil, was not very enriching for the common man.
The fact that there was a lot of drinking was partly the result of the sometimes poor living conditions in which most people lived at the time. Most people lived in very small houses, without much comfort. Running water only came from the water pump outside. The average families had a large number of children and there was sometimes great poverty, given that social provisions were still virtually non-existent. The only social contact and the place where one could forget all the misery for a short while was the café. Let us add to that that some employers usually paid their employees on Sunday mornings in one of their own inns and that the paymaster sometimes kept us waiting.
During that period, cafés sprang up like mushrooms in Sint-Joris. Almost all of these inns have disappeared… Except for three cafés: café De Brug, café ’t Klievertje and café De Oude Molen.
Café De Oude Molen (Galgeveld 4) was probably built shortly after the First World War, around the 1920s by brewer Arthur Langouche. During that period, he focused on building cafés. Wherever a piece of land became available, he bought it and had a café built there. This was also the case in the Galgenveld. Since the early 1920s, it has been a café there without interruption. The current café owner, Christiane Guidé, moved in in 1987.
In 1952, the finch society ‘De Molenhoekzangers’ was founded in café ‘De Oude Molen’ at S. De Vlieger (see group photo in front of the café). The following year, they organised their first finch show and also got their own flag. The finch society is still located there after all these years.
Translated by Google •
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