On the edge of The Forest, in the valley of The Silver Stream near where Neolithic people first settled in present-day Gaillemarde, is this well maintained shrine.
There the quiet corners tend to speak the loudest. Beside a narrow lane, half tucked into stone and shade, was a wayside chapel, modest in size but rich in feeling, the kind that belongs to the land as much as any tree or brook nearby.
Behind an iron grille stands a small wooden figure in Marian tradition, holding the infant Jesus. The inscription names her Notre Dame du Clos d’Argent, Our Lady of the Silver Enclosure, a fitting presence in a hamlet shaped more by meadows, gentle slopes, and the murmur of the Silver Stream than by anything grand or noisy. This is a place of fields and old farm tracks where devotion once travelled on foot and on horseback.
Above the chapel door rests a horseshoe. It hangs upside down. Elsewhere that might be a sign of luck poured away. Here it means something different. In rural Brabant, turning the shoe downward was seen as an act of generosity. Blessing flows out rather than being kept in. Good fortune falls onto the road, the traveller, the animals, and the land itself. A little protection for anyone passing by.
I stood there a while thinking of the people who placed it. Farmers, perhaps, or families who lived close to the soil and trusted in simple things. A shoe, a prayer, a quiet corner beside the path. No need for spectacle. Just the hope that whoever comes along receives something kind.
This forest and its edges hold many histories, yet it is often these small shrines that feel the most human. Someone once cared enough to build it, tend it, and ask for blessings not only for themselves but for strangers they would never meet. ‘Why was it placed there?’ almost seems an irrelevant question, perhaps just because it was right.