Kampernoelie is a building with history and - together with the neigbouring buildings - included in the inventory of industrial heritage of the Flemish Community. Between 1924 and 1965, the ice produced in the ice factory in the adjacent building was pilled up in the cellar of this building. The above-ground building was erected in the 1950s as a cool storage room for fruit and vegetables. With the arrival of the refrigerator, this activity came to an end in 1965. 

 

To illustrate how enterprising the De Looze family was (is...): after the cessation of the ice production, André De Looze started a chicken farm on industrial level. Hundreds of chickens laid an egg here every day, which were sold afterwards. This activity did not last very long though, because his son Roger and daughter-in-law Hilda also had the entrepreneurial microbe and set up a mushroom farm:  "Mushrooms Flemish Ardennes".

In the 1960s and 1970s, there were cultivation beds for mushrooms ("Champignons de Coche", the white variant of the Champignon de Paris) on the ground floor and in the cellars . First, a layer of horse manure was put on racks in which the mushrooms were sown. The room was then hermetically sealed and put under hot steam for a few days to allow the seeds to germinate. Then a layer of black soil came over and a few weeks later the miracle happened: white mushrooms popped up everywhere. The mushrooms were beautiful, firm, white and not too big. They were picked by hand and sold to greengrocers, restaurants, market vendors or private individuals.  There are still a few simple recipes available, but you can't find the white delicacy on the spot anymore. Mushroom farm “Flemish Ardennes” ceased to exist in 1972. After that, the current holiday home was mainly used as a barn for storing and drying grain. In the 90's, the building was transformed into a residential unit and in 2020 into a holiday home, Kampernoelie.