^{This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website}

Bray-Dunes (Municipality, Nord, France)

Bray's Duinen, Bray's Duynen

by Olivier Touzeau

Presentation of Bray-Dunes
Description of the flag of Bray-Dunes

See also:

Presentation of Bray-Dunes

Bray-Dunes (Dutch, Bray's Duinen; ancient Flemish writing, Bray's Duynen; 4,700 inhabitants, 856 hectares) is the northernmost municipality in France, located 20 km north-east of Dunkirk and bordering Belgium.

In the past, the coastal area of the extreme north of France was a vast, uninhabited expanse of sand and marshes, regularly flooded by water from the sea and the hinterland rivers and storm-lashed.
In the beginning of the XVIIth century, the canal of Veurne and adjacent watergangs were cut. Watergang (from Dutch water, water, and gang, way) is the name given in Belgium and the north of France to a canal or a ditch bordering a path or a polder. A few farms could be set up in the area, but the coastal stripe remained a royal hunting preserve, as prescribed by a royal decree in 1662. Game was made of wild boars, wolves (both were eradicated in the XVIIth century), hares and rabbits. What is today Bray-Dunes was then the A section of the municipality of Ghyvelde, limited on west by Zuydcoote and on east by the Belgian border.

At the end of the XVIIth century, a conflict concerning hunting privileges broke out in Dunkirk between the staff of the garrison and the bourgeois. On 20 April 1775, the State Council, presided by king Louis XV, stated that the cities of Dunkirk and Bergues, as well as the parishes depending on them, would be concessionary of the dunes and uncultivated areas located between Dunkirk and the Belgian border. One of the duties of the concessionaries was to limit the proliferation of hares and rabbits, which seriously threatened grain and vegetable production on the lands located on the left bank of the canal of Veurne.

The boundaries of the plots allocated to the municipalities were a source of quarrel after the French Revolution, when municipal authorities were set up. On 21 August 1806, an imperial decree prescribed the share of the dunes. The application of the decree took place only in 1839, with 38 municipalities sharing a coastal stripe of 245 hectares, which remained administratively part of the municipality of Ghyvelde. The southern border of the municipality of Ghyvelde was set up as the Dunkirk-Veurne railway in 1868.

At the end of the Second Empire, the shipowner Alphonse Bray (1804-1887) wanted to found a retirement home for the old seamen of the merchant navy and proposed to fund it for ever with an annuity. On 8 October 1869, after four years of discussion, the municipality of Dunkirk rejected Bray's offer. Next year, Bray purchased a big stripe of coastal land in Ghyvelde in order to build his Maison de bienfaisance (Charity house). The retirement house was also used as a school for the children of the hamlet that had been establ