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Gedinne (Municipality, Province of Namur, Belgium)

Municipal flag of Gedinne - Image by Arnaud Leroy, 27 January 2007

Presentation of Gedinne
Municipal flag of Gedinne

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Presentation of Gedinne

The municipality of Gedinne (4,445 inhabitants on 1 January 2007; 15,156 ha) is located in the forest of Ardenne, on the border with France, 40 km south of Dinant. The municipality of Gedinne is made since 1976 of the former municipalities of Gedinne, Bourseigne-Neuve, Bourseigne-Vieille, Houdrémont, Louette-Saint-Denis, Louette-Saint-Pierre, Malvoisin, Patignies, Rienne, Sart-Custinne, Vencimont and Willerzie.

The Millenium Tower (Tour du Millénaire), aka the Gedinne Tower (Tour de Gedinne), designed by the architect Daniel Dethier, from Liège, was built in March-September 2001 on the plateau of Croix-Scaille (503 m a.s.l.). The Croix-Scaille is the fourth highest point of Belgium; it is planted by a big forest of Oregon pines, which were used to build the tower. The 60-m high tower is made of six 32-m long trunks assembled with steel cables; the two giant inverted and interpenetrating tripods form three platforms at heights of 15, 30 and 45 m, to be reached by a 234-steps, double-spiral staircase. The fir trunks were selected and assembled locally; the tower was built in a horizontal position and raised with a hydraulic jack tugging at a cable fixed on the two trunks forming the base of the tower and anchored at a depth of 4 m, 60 m away from the tower.
The circuit of Gedinne was built in 1948; it is the place of a famous motorcycle race ran in July.

Houdrémont (221 inh.; 428 m a.s.l.) is the highest village in the province of Namur. The name of the village (in Wallon, Odrémont) recalls a Frankish origin, as "Hulderici mons" (Ulrich's mount) or "Hulderici mansio" (Ulrich's manor). In the Middle Ages, Houdrémont belonged to the County of Orchimont, whose "capital" (today a village part of the municipality of Vresse-sur-Semois) was destroyed by Duke of Nevers in 1554. According to Canon Roland, the lords of Orchimont appeared at the end of the Xth century, being probably related to the lords of Chiny. The lineage extincted in 1331 when Jacques II transferred his state to Count of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia John the Blind; Orchimont became then a Provostship of the County of Luxembourg. The family name d'Orchimont or d'Orchymont still exists in Belgium and Sweden; it is most probably not related to the originally lords of Orchimont but to later owners of the domain.
In 1814, the first Treaty of Paris maintained Houdrémont in France; the village was eventually allocated to the Kingdom of Netherlands after the battle of Waterloo and the definitive collapse of the French Empire.
The patron saint of Houdrémont is St. Quirin, celebrated on 11 October and, therefore, the priest martyrized along with St. Nicaise and not the soldier also venerated in the region. The soldier Quirin was invoked against the skin diseases, locally called St. Quellin or St. Quoilin's disease, but the veneration was transferred to the priest Quirin, whose body is still kept in Malmedy.

Sources:

Dethier and Co. website (page no longer online)
Houdrémont website

Ivan Sache, 27 January 2007

Municipal flag of Gedinne

The municipal flag of Gedinne is red with a white descending diagonal stripe including two thin red diagonal stripes.
According to Armoiries communales en Belgique. Communes wallonnes, bruxelloises et germanophones, the flag was adopted by the Municipal Council on 28 June 1994 and confirmed by the Executive of the French Community on 6 October 1994, with the following description:
Rouge à une laize diagonale descendante blanche longée de part et d'autre d'une étroite laize également blanche.
The flag is a banner of the municipal arms.

The Houdrémont website says that the arms of the early lords of Orchimont were D'argent à la bande de gueules coticée du même ("Argent a bend gules coticed of the same"), which would make of the arms of Gedinne the counter-coloured arms of Orchimont. According to Servais, Gedinne used in the past traditional and never officially adopted arms, made of a red field with a serrated horizontal stripe in the middle.

Arnaud Leroy, Pascal Vagnat & Ivan Sache, 27 January 2007