𝐇𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐝
I have learned more about the Forest from a map than any other source.
Walking the paths deepens understanding, of course, but René Stevens’ map from the first decade of the twentieth century is something else entirely. It links features, places, and trees from the past to the present day. Some things remain, many have vanished, but the map still works. It informs. It opens the eyes.
Here is a case in point. This is the Rouge Cloître.
When I visit a particular part of the Forest, I turn to Stevens to see what was important from his perspective.
Top left is what we now call the Étang du Moulin, or Molenvijver. Bottom right, now divided into two regularised basins, are the Grand and Petit Étangs de Clabots. But it is not these that Stevens names. He names a smaller, quieter body of water: the Clabots vijver.
I thought to while away a few hours tracing this pond back through history.
The Caertboeck of 1638 shows only the two larger lakes, named simply Vijvers van Rode Closter. The Ferraris maps of the late eighteenth century also show the ponds, but give them no names. Ferraris was mapping for military use; names mattered only if they served that purpose.
However, in 1882 a small pond appears and the larger lake, not the one next to the Rouge Cloître, is named as ‘Klabosch’.
Stevens marks an ‘R’ just above the pond and this was his abbreviation for ‘Ravinement artificiel’. A man-made channel. It seems that water was guided through what had once been boggy ground, allowing a new pool to form and persist.
Klabosch is a compound noun and the second syllable is straightforward. But Kla-?
There is something in that “Kla-” that recalls our own “claggy”, that sense of ground that clings to the boot and resists the step and today we see protected, wet woodland habitat on the south-eastern end of the larger lake.
The shift from Klabosch through Klabos and then Clabots is seamless.
Maps. They carry messages, echoes from our past. They are part of us.
Alternatively, perhaps Heer Klabosch was the engineer behind the ravinement. I haven’t found him in tentative record searching but maybe. Maybe it is an even older proprietary name resurfacing.