Hunting forest, training ground and airfield
John the Fearless and Emperor Charles V came to hunt deer in the Saventerlo. The hunting ground was pledged several times, among others in 1525 to Charles de Lannoy, viceroy of Naples. A regulation of 1519 forbade anyone except foresters and woodcutters to walk in the forest with an axe or billhook; anyone caught paid 3 crowns, received corporal punishment or had to carry a burning candle in the procession. Anyone who dared to touch a forester risked losing a hand. In the 17th and 18th centuries the forest was largely cleared; the Ferraris map of 1777 shows only a small wood.
After the French Revolution the 640 hectares were confiscated and sold; they passed to William I, King of the Netherlands, and served as a training and camping ground for Dutch soldiers, until 1830 ended that burden on farmers and quarries. After the First World War chicory cultivation flooded the fields and brought prosperity. In 1938 the army expropriated 87 hectares of the best chicory land in Melsbroek for an airfield. The Germans extended it immediately in 1940, the Allies took it over in 1944, and in 1945 it went to the Belgian state. On the flat Lo it grew into a world-class airport, known since 1958 as Zaventem Airport.
Les Lierres
The estate around the villa ‘Les Lierres’ once belonged to the L'Hoir family. Later Alexis Albert Mans from Sint-Joost-ten-Node bought the house; he lived there until 1914. Around the house lay a beautiful park with a large pond, where people skated in winter. The last occupant, Maurice De Never, turned the park into the Alpiflora ornamental plant nursery.
A district under pressure
Around 1980 the Lo had some 1,300 inhabitants, hemmed in between the Haachtsesteenweg, the airport, the motorway to Evere, the interchange and the Ring. From 1970 the first houses fell to the bulldozers. Because of the airport, the draft regional plan of 1976 imposed a general building ban on the district, and the link road between the E5 and the E10 cut the Diegem cemetery in two and isolated the hamlet even further. Many parishioners moved away because their houses were demolished. Yet as early as the 19th century the municipality had written that the Lo, lying higher than the valley, suffered less from disease and that people lived longer there.
The elderly and the disabled
Because the centre was far away, in 1968 parish priest Houbrechts, Lisette Janssens and Jozefina Soetemans set up a Pensioners' League of Diegem-Lo of its own, with a card afternoon every Tuesday in ‘Ons Lokaal’ on the Zaventemsesteenweg. From 1973 to 1976 the Christmas parties were held at the Novotel or the Holiday Inn, with 60 to 70 people. In 1970 the Lo got a parish council, chaired by Jean Routiaux, and at Christmas 1975 a Third Age League was formed, explicitly ‘without colour or party’.
On 28 September 1975 the Zaventem peripheral federation and the parish council organised a first afternoon of entertainment for disabled people in the church of the Lo, with Bob Artoos's band; some 600 disabled people were counted within the federation. On 21 December 1975 a second afternoon followed, attended by 200 people. In 1974 Diegem had also joined the sheltered workshop in Zaventem.
Three centenarians
Within five years Diegem celebrated three centenarians, all three with ties to the Lo. Alexis Mans, born in Sint-Joost-ten-Node on 16 September 1871 and resident of ‘Les Lierres’ until 1914, had often painted the Diegem landscape; at his reception he gave Mayor Blairon a drawing he had begun at the age of 99. He died on 27 January 1972. Pieter Croquet, born in Diegem on 29 October 1871, was received by the council on his hundredth birthday, after which the Lo festival committee held a procession with scenes from his life, from his marriage in 1900 to his work as a factory hand and shopkeeper. He died on 25 June 1973. Ferdinand Deblaer, born in Evere on 23 January 1877, was celebrated in 1977 and again a year later at the Parkhof care home in Machelen; he died on 10 November 1978.
Despite everything, the Lo remained optimistic. At Easter and Christmas the parish felt closer than ever, and at the KWB's brawn suppers people ate and sang, including the ‘Song of the Lo’, which promises that everyone will stay cheerful ‘even if we live a hundred years’, and that Diegem-Lo will not be lost.