The Warehouse on the Demer

The Pakhuis is located on the Demer in Schulen, behind the Oude Moolen (watermill). You can see the building beautifully along the walking path that runs through the Lummensbroek nature reserve (just behind the bridge over the Demer on the left when you come from Schulen station). About the history of the Pakhuis. "Clay, bricks and roof tiles are very heavy products. About 2 to 300 years ago, the transport options were still very limited. People had the choice between transport by horse and cart on the road or by ship on canals and rivers. Due to its location on the Demer, Schulen had an interesting waterway along which transport had been organised for centuries. The Pakhuis on the Demer is an interesting witness to this. This building was a storage place and stop for ships that used the Demer." - Source: pannestraat.be/thema_transport.html Description: "An 18th century warehouse with a house located west behind the Grote Molen on the Demer on the border with Herk-de-Stad in Schalbroek. The warehouse is accessible via a side road of the Schulensebaan and a large newly landscaped front garden." - Source (heritage): inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be/erfgoedobjecten/215572 Wikipedia: "The Pakhuis in the Belgian municipality of Lummen in Limburg was a storage place for goods from the 18th century. Flat-bottomed boats sailed the Demer to this location until 1920. Here, goods from Mechelen, Diest... were temporarily stored to be transported by horse and cart to Hasselt, Maastricht and Germany. In the building there is a list from 10 January 1776 with the description of 138 goods that were transported on the Demer. It mentions various old Dutch content and weight terms and mentions the transport prices to numerous Dutch and German cities." - nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Het_Pakhuis

Until a century ago, several flat-bottomed boats shuttled between Lummen and Diest. After all, the 18th-century Lummen Warehouse on the Demer was a distribution center avant la lettre. The Lummen skippers regularly transported Diester's beer, but also butter, eggs and furniture. During the First World War, all civilian traffic on the Demer was banned by the Germans and after the war only sporadically manure, potatoes and oats were transported. There are no longer any witnesses who saw flat-bottomed boats sailing between Het Pakhuis van Lummen and Diest. There are oral stories, texts and even a drawing of the last skipper on the Demer. Jozef Vanesch (1854-1933), like his father and grandfather, pulled a flat-bottomed boat on the Demer. Such a flat-bottomed boat was 12 to 15 meters long, 1 meter deep and 2.5 to 3 meters wide in the middle and ended in a spire. The boat could be made larger with 'lifts and extension planks' if special loads had to be transported. Source: nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20220711_96944570