Last modified: 2008-06-21 by ivan sache
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![[Flag of Manage]](../images/b/be-whtma.gif)
Municipal flag of Manage - Image by Arnaud Leroy, 26 November 2005
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The municipality of Manage (22,382 inhabitants on 1 January 2007; 1,969 ha) is located 25 km north-west of Charleroi and 6 kilometers north-east of La Louvière. The municipality of Manage is made since 1976 of the former municipalities of Manage, Bois-d'Haine, Fayt-lez-Manage and La Hestre (including Bellecourt since 1970).
The territory of Manage was initially covered with forests, as
reflected by the toponymy: Bois-d'Haine refers to a wood (in French,
bois), whereas Fayt and La Hestre refer to the beech (in Latin,
fagus; in French, hêtre; in some regions of France, fayard). The
first Celtic settlements were probably set up in clearings.
In 1904, Raoul Warocqué supervized archeological excavations in
Fayt-les-Manage. A Gallo-Roman necropolis yielded a lot of artifacts,
such as funerary urns, bowls, glassware, fibula and coins, shown today
in the Royal Museum of Mariemont. Another Gallo-Roman site was found in
1997.
In the Middle Ages, the villages of Fayt, Bois-d'Haine, La Hestre and
Bellecourt belonged to the County of Hainaut, whereas Manage belonged
to the
In 1795, the municipalities of Bellecourt, La Hestre (seceded from
Haine-Saint-Pierre), Bois-d'Haine and Fayt (then called
Fayt-lez-Seneffe) were set up. Manage was then a hamlet of Seneffe.
Coal mining started in 1755 in La Hestre with the founding of the
Société des charbonnages d'Haine-Saint-Pierre et La Hestre. The coal
industry was boosted by the building of the road Nivelles-Bray,
achieved in 1764. In the beginning of the XIXth century, several
villagers from Manage abandoned agriculture to work in the
neighbouring collieries of Mariemont, Bascoup, Haine-Saint-Pierre,
Haine-Saint-Paul, La Louvière, etc.. In Manage, coal was exploited only
in Haine-Saint-Pierre and La Hestre; attemps of digging mines in
Bois-d'Haine, Fayt and Manage failed.
In 1821, the manufacturer François-Isidore Dupont (1780-1838) built in
Fayt an industrial complex with forges and rolling mills. The complex
produced, among others, some of the rails used to build the
Brussels-Mechelen railway, which was the first railway built in continental Europe. Thanks to Adolphe Dechamps (1807-1875), Minister in
the 1840-1850s, who settled in the castle of Scailmont in 1815, Manage
became a main rail junction. The section Braine-le-Comte-Manage of the Brussels-Charleroi line was inuagurated in 1842; the first station was
built in Manage the next year. After the building of the Mons-Manage
(1849), Manage-Wavre (1854) and Manage-Piéton (1865) lines, the station was isolated in the middle of the ways, which caused several accidents. It
was decided to build a new station, inaugurated in 1901 and then one of
the biggest stations in Belgium. The station was demolished in 1973.
The railway station boosted the local economy. In 1849,
Apollinaire-Adrien Bougard opened a glassworks. A dozen of other
glassworks was founded from 1880 onwards by famous master glaziers'
dynasties such as Wauty, Michotte, Hirsch and Castelain. The parish of
Manage seceded from Seneffe in 1854 and Manage was eventually made an
independent municipality in July 1880.
In Bois-d'Haine, Augustin Gilson founded at the end of the XIXth
century the world famous bolt factory Boulonneries Gilson and the
Ateliers du Thiriau.
Industrialization caused a dramatic increase in the population of
the villages and Manage became a main center of the struggle for
workers' emancipation. A first socialist workers' cooperative called
La solidarité was founded in the colliery of Basse-Hestre in 1869.
Some of his members set up a few years later the Maison du Peuple et
du Progrès in Jolimont and the cooperative Le Progrès (1886),
directed by Théophile Massart (1840-1904). In 1887, Émile Herman in
Fayt and Ferdinand Cavrot in La Hestre were among the first socialists
elected Municipal Councillors in Belgium.
In 1911, the old Société des charbonnages de Haine-Saint-Pierre et La
Hestre was suppressed and its remains were absorbed by the colliery of
Mariemont, which closed the colliery of La Hestre.
In 1942, the municipalities forming now Manage were incorporated into the municipality of La Louvière; they became independent again after the liberation in September 1944. The big industries closed in the 1960s, for instance Gilson in Bois-d'Haine and Anglo-Germain in La Croyère (1967).
Source: Municipal website, text by Joseph Strale
Ivan Sache, 26 November 2005
The municipal flag of Manage is quartered yellow-blue-red-white.
According to Armoiries communales en Belgique. Communes wallonnes, bruxelloises et
germanophones, the flag follows the proposal made by the
Heraldry and Vexillological Council of the French Community as
Écartelé de jaune, bleu, rouge et blanc.
The flag is based on the municipal arms of Manage.
On the municipal website, Joseph Strale quotes an article by Jacques
Lefèbvre (Le Peuple, 11 January 1982) on the municipal arms of Manage (blazons of the former municipalities from Armorial du Hainaut, available on the Heraldus website.
Before the municipal reform of 1976, four out of the five merged
villages (including Bellecourt, incorporated into La Hestre in 1970)
had a coat of arms. Only Manage had no arms. The arms of the four
villages were based on the seals of the feudal families owning them
during the Ancient Regime:
- Bellecourt belonged to the family of Le Rœulx, vassal of the Counts of Hainaut, and used the arms of the Counts as its seal. On 26 July 1926,
the municipality of Bellecourt was granted by Royal Decree the quartered arms of Hainaut as its municipal arms, Écartelé, au I et IV au lion de sable, armé et lampassé de gueules; au
II et III d'or au lion de gueules, armé et lampassé d'azur ("Quarterly, I and IV a lion sable armed and langued gules, II and III
or a lion gules armed and langued azure");
- Bois-d'Haine also belonged to the Counts of Hainaut, but was granted
Charles V's Imperial eagle as its municipal arms by Royal Decree of 3 July 1925, D'or à l'aigle bicéphale éployée de sable couronnée du champ, qui est
d'Empire ("Or a double-headed eagle sable crowned of the field, that is Empire");
- Fayt was owned by the family of Gongnies from the XVth century onwards.
The municipality was granted the former arms of this family as its
municipal arms by Royal Decree of 23 March 1935, D'azur à la croix ancrée d'argent ("Azure a cross moline argent");
- La Hestre was owned by the Montigny and was granted the arms of this
family as its municipal arms by Royal Decree of 8 April 1929, Burelé d'argent et d'azur de douze pièces ("Barully argent and azure of twelve pieces").
On 30 June 1977, the Municipal Council of the new municipality of
Manage applied for municipal arms. The proposal was accepted by the
Heraldry Council of the General Directorate of Regional and Local
Institutions on 16 November 1981. Manage was one of the first Walloon
municipalities to have new municipal arms, described as:
Écartelé au 1, écartelé au premier et au quatrième d'or au lion de
sable, armé: et lampassé de gueules, au deuxième et troisième, d'or au
lion de gueules, arméet lampassé d'azur, qui est de Hainaut; au 2,
burelé d'argent et d'azur de douze pièces qui est de Montigny; au 3,
d'azur à la croix ancrée d'argent, qui est de Gongnies; au 4, d'or à
l'aigle bicéphale éployée de sable, qui est de l'Empire.
"Quartered: 1, quartered one and four or a lion sable armed and langued
gules two and three or a lion gules armed and langued azure, that is
Hainaut; 2, barruly argent and azure twelve pieces, that is Montigny;
3, azur a cross anchored argent, that is Gongnies; 4, or a
double-headed eagle sable, that is Empire".
That is the former municipal arms of Bellecourt, La Hestre, Fayt and
Bois d'Haine quartered.
Arnaud Leroy, Pascal Vagnat & Ivan Sache, 11 November 2005