Two paper mills on the Woluwe
Paper was already being made in Diegem in the 15th century. Around 1660 two paper mills turned on the edge of Nijpezele, one belonging to the Jacobs family and one to the Foppens, a Brussels family of printers. Around 1700 Dutch troops set them on fire, and the ruins lay untouched for a quarter of a century.
Pieter Jan Bauwens
In 1725 Pieter Jan Bauwens of Brussels was allowed to work the mills again. He bought both and turned them into a single business. In 1728 he added a sandstone windmill, which towered over the valley for decades. The factory soon produced 70 reams of paper a day. In 1730 it employed 80 workers, and Bauwens obtained the archbishop's permission for a chapel of his own, so that his people could hear Mass on Sundays without stopping work.
The chapel stood on the Fabrieksstraat, overlooking the Woluwe: a small building of about 10 by 6 metres, with a façade of white Diegem stone and a curved pediment. After the French Revolution it became the foreman's house. On 15 May 1737 the factory burned down through a worker's carelessness, and Bauwens moved to a mill on the Senne in Brussels.
From Van Triest to Zerque
In 1757 the Compagnie Van Triest bought the business, which caught fire again the following year. Around 1802 Jacques Anneet became the owner, then his son Sébastien and, through the daughters, the Demat family, printers and booksellers in Brussels. In 1860 everything passed to the firm C.J. Champagne, A. Zerque & Cie. Around 1880 the windmill lost its sails; until 1934 it served as a water tower for paper making.
The De Coninck cardboard works
In 1882 Philippe Jacques Georges De Coninck, born in Temse in 1831, bought the factory. He lived in the villa ‘Les Acacias’ and founded the Société Anonyme des Cartonneries et Papeteries de Dieghem. After his death in 1897 his son Georges took over; he was mayor of Diegem from 1906 to 1921 and in 1914 was held hostage by the Germans for ten days together with parish priest Meeus and the castle owner Marga. The Georges De Conincklaan keeps his name alive.
After Georges (who died in 1926) came his brother Edward and then Paul De Coninck. After the Second World War 80 workers made 80 tonnes of corrugated cardboard there every day. Fire remained a danger: in June 1951 a straw stack of 40 by 25 metres went up in flames, 600 tonnes of straw. Cheap pulp from the north finished the company off: it closed on 31 December 1971. In 1973 all the buildings were demolished, including the mill tower of 1728, ‘the giant of the Woluwe valley’.
The little Saint Cornelius chapel
According to tradition, when the relics of Saint Cornelius were brought from the abbey of Kornelimünster to Diegem, they stopped at the paper mills, where they were handed over to the parish priest. A small chapel was built in remembrance. A later chapel of 1628 stood where the Sint-Corneliusweg (now Degreefstraat) met the St.-Katarinastraat. In 1929-1930 it was moved into the wall along the St.-Katarinastraat, together with the stone bearing the date 1628.