Until 2009 the restaurant Het Paviljoentje and the stately Camerman House stood on this site. Only the traces of the mantelpieces remain of the Camerman House. The Camerman House is memorable for several reasons: the stately home was associated with one of the most famous families of Doel, it commemorated the Battle of Doel in 1832 and it was one of the only Empire-style buildings in our country.
The Camerman House
The Camerman House was built at the beginning of the 19th century as a doctor’s residence. It was a beautiful mansion in Empire style. When the Camerman House was restored after the battle of Doel, the two cannonballs that had destroyed the side wall were bricked into the wall as a memorial.
Until the time of the demolition in 2009, the house still had its original wooden floors. The living room had a special Victorian ceiling and a beautiful mantelpiece. During the demolition, murals and more than 150-year-old wallpaper emerged. The wallpaper appeared to come from the studios of the Art and Craft movement of the English art innovator William Morris.
When in March 2009 it became clear that they wanted to tear down the historic building, it was occupied for weeks. The activists were eventually arrested and those who prevented the demolition were threatened with heavy fines.
A few months later, the judge declared the demolitions in Doel illegal. The demolition works in Camermanstraat stopped abruptly, but the verdict came too late for the Camerman House.
The Camerman family
In the church of Doel is a memorial stone, decorated with a white marble statue of a dying soldier with a religious book and a paternoster on the chest. The monument was funded in 1870 by Miss Maria Isabella Camerman in honor of her brother, Petrus Johannes Antonius Camerman. Petrus Camerman, son of mayor Camerman, born on May 6, 1792, was a seminarian in the diocese of Ghent. He, along with his fellow students, refused to take the oath of allegiance to Napoleon and was therefore obliged to serve in the French army. On their way to the front in Germany, the group fell victim to an epidemic, which killed the young seminarian.
Isabella Camerman also co-financed the construction of the neo-Gothic chapel at the park on the dike of the Scheldt and financed the construction of the monastery in 1854. The Camermans were not only generous sponsors. They supplied various mayors and secretaries, innkeepers, priests and a missionary to the Scheldt village.
The Battle of Doel
Belgium broke away from the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1830, but in 1832 the Antwerp citadel was still in Dutch hands. Belgians and French wanted to put an end to that.
On November 30, French foot soldiers entered the strategically located Doel. At the same time, a Dutch fleet with three steamers and 15 gunboats anchored off the Scheldt in front of Doel. The Dutch fleet shelled the village on December 6. Camerman’s House was hit by two cannonballs.
On December 23, 1500 Dutch soldiers landed in Liefkenshoek to attack the French who were stationed behind the Verkortingsdijk (near the current buffer). Seeing the landing, Jan C. Camerman, town clerk of Doel, rushed to Kieldrecht, where the French garrison was staying, but the French in Doel managed to drive out the Dutch before help arrived from Kieldrecht. Until the end of the twentieth century, the dike where the battle took place was known as ‘the French dike’.
The French king Louis-Philippe had a painting made of the Battle of Doel by the French naval painter Jean-Antoine Théodore de Gudin, a work that still hangs in the Louvre.
King Leopold I paid a visit to the village on 8 May 1833 following the battle of Doel. Camerman was appointed Knight in the Order of Leopold. In 1836 he became mayor of Doel and later also Dijkgraaf of the Doelpolder and the Arenbergpolder.
Town Hall of Doel
The old town hall of Doel is located on the corner of Camermanstraat and Visserstraat. The building dates from the second half of the 18th century with renovations from the 19th century. Here the mayor, the municipal secretary and the champetter housed together. The municipal council of Doel also met here until the merger with Beveren in 1977.
