Neder-Over-Heembeek

Neder-Over-Heembeek is a northern part of the City of Brussels municipality in Belgium. It is a former municipality which lost its municipality status when it was merged with the City of Brussels. Now it is a section of that municipality, and a predominantly industrial zone, remarkable principally for the Military Hospital, which is the National Burns and Poisons center.

It was once a small village, just named Heembeek on the edge of medieval Brussels, and was founded around a small church that became the center of a parish.

Later a second church was built around a growing hamlet in the north, and the two parishes were separated, that became two villages: Over-Heembeek ("Upper Heembeek") surrounding the church of St Nicholas in the northern part, and Neder-Heembeek ("Lower Heembeek") surrounding the church of Saints Peter and Paul in the southern part of Heembeek. Both parishes came into the possession of Dieleghem Abbey in 1112 and 1155, respectively.

During the 15th century the Goudenaken family was the owner of the castle at Lower Heembeek. In 1505, it came into the possession of the famous Busleyden family with the marriage of Adriana van Goudenaken and Gilis van Busleyden. They had twelve children. Gilis was the brother of two other famous members of the family: Hieronymus van Busleyden and Frans van Busleyden (aka Franciscus Buslidius). For more than a century the castle remained in the hands of the Busleyden family. In 1554, after the decease of his mother Adriana, Jan van Busleyden became Lord at Heembeek. But only two years later he died, and his son Gilis inherited Heembeek Castle in 1557. Being a minor, he came under the guardianship of his uncle Willem van Busleyden. Gilis died in Brussels in 1596. With his wife Anna he had six children. Adriaan-Eric Van Busleyden inherited Heembeek Castle, but he died in 1617. His brother Lodewijk had already died in 1615 and the castle was handed to Margareta Van Busleyden. She was married to Jan van Tiras. When Margareta died in 1663 Frans-Robrecht van Tyras became heir of the castle at Lower Heembeek (sloth van busleyden op de schipvaert). He died two months later and Jan Frans 't Serclaes, the son of Joanna Van Busleyden became the next owner of het casteelke of sloth van Busleyden. He sold the castle in 1674 to the monks at Dieleghem Abbey. Two years later, they resold the castle to the widow of Jan Bollaert from the well-known merchant family in Antwerp.

In 1814, the two parishes of Lower and Upper Heembeek were finally merged into one parish when the first municipality did appear in 1813, but instead of taking back the older name Heembeek, the two adjectives were kept to preserve the identity of the two parishes.

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