‘T Oud Brughuys

Photos and words by Cliff Lucas.
Edited by Breandán Kearney.

Café Society is a photographic series which celebrates the spaces at the heart of Belgian beer culture. See more here.

In 1871, the first metal “swing bridge” was built across the Scheldt River, an historically important trade route beginning in northern France and passing through Antwerp on its way to the North Sea. In order to pay for the bridge, the municipal commissioners at the time decided to construct a bridge house (brughuys in Dutch) to house a toll collector. They would manually “turn” (swing) the bridge on its centre column allowing taller ships to pass, while also collecting a toll from the skippers. Prosper Loral, who lived in the bridge house from 1900 until the 1930s, famously used a wooden shoe nailed to a long stick to hoist the tolls he received up onto the bridge. He earned the nickname ‘t houten schoentje, or “the wooden shoe”, for his clever approach. During both World Wars, the bridge was blown up and the bridge house itself was damaged. The building next door, which survived the blasts, had been a brewery until its copper equipment was requisitioned for the war effort. In the 50 years following, the bridge house remained a private residence until Sofie De Dobbeleer, in 1995, decided a change was due. Three years and an extensive renovation later, ‘t Oud Brughuys was open for business as a café and became a popular stop for cyclists. It’s interior is warm and homely (Sofie and her family lived upstairs for many years before moving next door to the former brewery), with the original exposed brick walls, wooden ceiling beams, a rack of antique pipes, and a cast iron Leuven stove (Leuvense stoof in Dutch) in the back room that “keeps your feet warm, but your back cold,” according to a regular. Sofie, who has worked in Horeca since she was 15, appreciates the importance of a welcoming environment. Her great-grandfather, whose family portrait sits next to a porcelain Jesus bust atop a fireplace mantle, was a brewer in the nearby town of Beervelde. “Maybe that’s where I get it from,” she muses. And while boats no longer stop to pay a toll for passing, Sofie still collects her small payments each time a cyclist stops in for a quick beer before continuing on.