Is Ypres Visible From Spanbroekmolen?

[Fattyowls]

Does anyone know if the spires of Ypres are visible from the north side of the crater at Spanbroekmolen? I've just had a play about in Google Earth (again) but the results are inconclusive. The last few times I've been there I've been preoccupied with trying to get a photo looking south where you can see the double crassier slagheaps at Loos as per Rose Coombes' top tip and I've never walked round the other side of the peace pool to take a snap.

 

I know that you can see into Ypres from the Petit Bois Craters and from Hollandsechuur Farm and have the photographic evidence to back that up but I think the Petit Bois spur gets in the way from Spanbroekmolen.

 

Much appreciated,

 

Pete.

[Minefield Mc]

I usually have a good look toward Ypres to get my bearings when wandering about and I can’t say I recall seeing the spires. If memory serves me right I think the ground slopes up slightly towards the north of Spanbroekmolen restricting the view. Happy to be proved wrong by any pal with better vision though. 

[Fattyowls]

7 minutes ago, Minefield Mc said:

I usually have a good look toward Ypres to get my bearings when wandering about and I can’t say I recall seeing the spires. If memory serves me right I think the ground slopes up slightly towards the north of Spanbroekmolen restricting the view. Happy to be proved wrong by any pal with better vision though. 

 

Thanks MMc - that's what I think too for what it's worth. It's just that Spanbroekmolen is that bit higher, which is of course why it had the mill built on it. I know exactly what you mean when you say you orientate yourself on the the spires of the city.

 

Pete.

 

P.S. I've also just notices that that this is my 3,000th post, I'm not sure quite how I've managed that........

Edited 17 January , 2018 by Fattyowls

[Knotty]

Hi Pete

3000 - Don’t let them know in Skindles or they will all be ordering liquid refreshment or a suitable substitute.

[nigelcave]

I have a feeling that it might just be possible from the north east side of the crater - but if so it would be marginal; certainly not from anywhere else. I spent some time footling around there when working on the BE books on Ypres 1914 but I was concentrating on the attack of the Lincolns, attempting to retake Wijtschaete in the confused fighting at the end of October/early November 1914.

[Fattyowls]

6 minutes ago, Knotty said:

Hi Pete

3000 - Don’t let them know in Skindles or they will all be ordering liquid refreshment or a suitable substitute.

 

You know where probably 90% of them have been made.

 

But back to the question in hand: this is Ypres from the Petit Bois craters taken with a bit of zoom.........

 

 

 

[Fattyowls]

Thanks Nigel, it is an area that fascinates me. When I think of late October 1914 I think of Ronald Coleman and how he came to have a limp, but that was the London Scottish just a bit south at Messines.

 

Pete.

[brianmorris547]

I've just had a look at my 1;20,000 IGN (or NGI in Flemish) Heuvelland-Mesen (Messines) no 28/ 5-6. The Pool of Peace Vml Spanbroekmolenput at MR 903 252 is on the 75 contour line. The ground then drops slightly to a wooded area on the Kemmel Witjschate road which has another crater at MR 905 256 between the 65 and 67.2 contour. (I know that the road there is in a dip) Petit Bois at MR 907 264 is slightly to the right of the direct line of sight from Spanbroekmolen. (I first visited PB many years ago as it was the site of a trench raid by 1 Lincolns in December 1914) . The craters at PB are on the 50 contour line. Looks from the map like it should be possible but hard to say.

Brian

[Fattyowls]

Thanks Brian. I've been looking at one of the planning maps for Messines in 1917 and the ground seems to slope away in a northerly direction; but the mill appears to have the summit of the spur between it and Ypres. I'll try and post some photos of the way the ground rises and falls but I'm not sure they prove much. The answer is to go back soon. As I mentioned above my focus has always been either the opposite direction or with the level of the water in the pool itself.

 

Pete.

 

P.S. This is what I was trying to get a photo of. Rose Coombs was right as with most things.......

[brianmorris547]

Pete

Good photo. I've just spread my 1:100,000 IGN Lille - Boulogne sur Mer out on the floor. A distance of about 35 km from the Pool of Peace to the Spoil Heaps. 

Brian

[Fattyowls]

10 hours ago, brianmorris547 said:

Pete

Good photo. I've just spread my 1:100,000 IGN Lille - Boulogne sur Mer out on the floor. A distance of about 35 km from the Pool of Peace to the Spoil Heaps. 

Brian

 

If you haven't got it already I can recommend Google Earth for such queries, I've just measured it as 23.13 miles, so you are pretty well on the money. That said there is a real satisfaction in spreading out a map. I was reading the thread about books on the American Argonne offensive and have been trying to find my IGN map of Verdun to see if it covers enough of the battlefield.

 

Just to follow up on my previous offer (or threat?) to post some more photos, this is the two Petit Bois craters with the Kemmelberg in the background taken from Kroonaerdstraat(ish) looking west. The southern of the two craters is behind the screen of trees on the left and the northern one is just visible as a line of reeds just to the left of the Kemmelberg.

[Fattyowls]

This one is from roughly the same place as the view across to Ypres above, just beyond the two craters in the previous photo. I'm looking roughly south and the Maedelstaede Farm crater is behind the long farm building.

 

[Fattyowls]

This one is taken with the Maedelstaede Farm crater immediately behind me looking south south west with a bit of zoom.  The Peckham crater is behind the line of bare trees in the middle distance with Spanbroekmolen the trees on the horizon.  You should be able to see Ypres but I'm going to have to go back and take a photo from where the street lamp intersects the horizon to the right of the bushes around the peace pool. It's suddenly looking like an expensive quest.

 

[brianmorris547]

I attach the 1:20,000 IGN map showing Petit Bois and the craters, and the Pool of Peace. I had read Simpson's Official History of the Lincolns covering the 1st Bn in 1914. Back in 1987 I retraced the route of the Great Retreat and the advance back to the Aisne in my car. I ended up in the Kemmel area. I was aware from the WD that the Bn had made a raid (location not identified but between Kemmel and Wijtschate) on 08/12/1914 in which a number of men were posted as missing. I had wrongly assumed that my grandfather was one of them. The following year I visited the Museum of Lincolnshire Life (now part of Lincolnshire Archives on St Rumbold St) and found the diary of Corporal North which identified the location of the raid as Petit Bois. I went back the next summer and walked the ground, managing to touch an electrified fence in the process. The house with the red roof in the first of the latest three pictures is the approximate position of the Lincs on 08/12/1914 and it is where I walked to Petit Bois from. All to no avaiI because I later found out from the Medal Rolls at Kew that he was in the 8th Bn and was captured at Loos. 

Brian

[neverforget]

17 hours ago, Fattyowls said:

 It's suddenly looking like an expensive quest.

 

But one that I reckon you've talked yourself into mate.😊

Great pictures as usual by the way.👍

[Fattyowls]

'Fraid so mate; it's no hardship, I know that area reasonably well and there is so much to see. Brian's post has added extra interest to that and also jogged my memory of another visit which may help my quest. I'll check on Percy Lewis and his illustrious neighbour while I'm there as I mentioned to Knotty earlier.

 

Pete.

 

P.S. I've just measured the distance from where I took the photo to the edge of the trees around the Peace Pool, it's three quarters of a mile. That's zoom lens foreshortening for you.

 

 

 

Edited 20 January , 2018 by Fattyowls
Fat finger moment

[neverforget]

I'm working on how to convince my better 'arf that a battlefield and cemetery trek would be right up her street. I may have to cleverly wrap it as some kind of fine wine sampling tour I think. 

[Fattyowls]

Just now, neverforget said:

I'm working on how to convince my better 'arf that a battlefield and cemetery trek would be right up her street. I may have to cleverly wrap it as some kind of fine wine sampling tour I think. 

 

Fine wines. Belgian chocolates. Swiss Toni on tour!

 

Pete.

[neverforget]

4 minutes ago, Fattyowls said:

 

Fine wines. Belgian chocolates. Swiss Toni on tour!

 

Pete.

It would take all of his best blarney and more to persuade her but it's a good shout on your part. If all else fails, there's always chloroform I suppose. 

[Fattyowls]

7 hours ago, neverforget said:

If all else fails, there's always chloroform I suppose. 

 

That is like crime in a multistorey car park - wrong on so many levels.

 

I'll dig out some more photos tomorrow to add a bit more to the quest. Might be an idea to get the thread back on topic.

 

Pete.

[Fattyowls]

I'm not sure if this advances my quest or just reinforces my need to go back and walk the area, but I took some photos on a previous visit, including this one from Irish House Cemetery. I've visited the area of Brian's Lincolns raid and also the northernmost of the small scale attacks just before Christmas that played a part in the truces. The attacks all failed and just left bodies in no man's land some of which prompted burial truces on Christmas Day. The one here didn't and many of the dead were buried in a mass grave after the taking of the ridge in June 1917.

 

This photo is looking from Irish House north north East with zoom - the cathedral is visible between the trees. What looking hard at these photos reinforced is the German positions on the north of the ridge were significantly further west than the town of Ypres. In the first photo I posted you can just see the wind turbines which mark the front line north of the town out to Boezinge. I've read of positions north of the town being shelled from in front, from the right and from the rear with artillery firing over the town from behind the Messines ridge.

 

[neverforget]

Pete. This is a most highly commendable photographic project which you have quietly and modestly unveiled and gifted to us.

I see now that your pictures are not those of an ordinary battlefield tourist, but those of a man on a mission to provide a most remarkable historical documentation of events.

I applaud you, and feel privileged to have shared in the results of the fruits of your labours.

Bravo!

[Fattyowls]

They are the result of incessant but mindlessly random snapping and the editing out of the ones with the wonky horizons and/or exposure issues. The sloping ponds are trickier to correct. I should also credit my getaway driver who was Major M. Mingou of the Belgian Army (and occasionally of this parish); she really takes superb photos, but then her camera has a zoom lens the size of your forearm and she takes time to think about the picture and compose it properly, if necessary lying on the ground. All of which is in complete contrast to yours truly. She also speaks several languages and one of them being Flemish was able to blag an entry to Hollandsechuur Farm to look at the craters out the back. This involved an electrified fence and some curious Belgian livestock both of which fortunately we were able to negotiate. Marilyne hasn't posted on the forum for a while as I suspect she is busy running the Belgian Army but her photos would be worth seeing. 

 

If I was any good at taking photographs I wouldn't have to start the thread in the first place. Where photography is concerned I have much to be modest about.

 

Pete.

Edited 21 January , 2018 by Fattyowls

[neverforget]

Ah, so I was right but I was wrong.

Congratulations are in order to both of you in that case then. The photos clearly are not just "snaps", and their purposeful character would be obvious to a blind man on a galloping horse.

I still have the feeling that you are understating your part in the combined effort though somehow, remarkable though the lady clearly is.

[neverforget]

Pete. I sent a message outlining your query to someone I know who lives in Ypres. He is the chairman of the Last Post Association, and one of the most obliging gentlemen I have ever met. My son and I stayed at his apartment on our visit to Ypres for my 60th, and he went out of his way to make our stay as pleasant and informed as possible.

I copy and paste his reply below:

 

"Hi Steve. Yes of course I remember.

Spanbroekmolen is one of the high points. I am sure you see Vimy ridge from there on a clear day.

But I am not 100% sure you see Ypres spires. The heights of Wijtschate could be in between and spoil the view. Next time I am there I will have a look.

All the best, Ben."