Hooge Crater Museum

West Flanders


In a quaint repurposed chapel on the Ypres–Menen road (N8), this small but characterful two-room museum is entered between assorted WWI sandbags, rusty rail sections and field guns. Inside, uniformed mannequins, arms and assorted memorabilia are ranged in venerable display cases around a life-sized model of a red Fokker triplane. The attached café is appealing.

Massive explosions detonated beneath German defences by British engineers created the crater for which it’s named. That crater now forms a pretty pond 100m east in the gardens of Kasteelhof ‘t Hooghe, which also has some re-excavated trenches.


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