Qualla: Arques, Pas-de-Calais

Arques, Pas-de-Calais: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Pir6mon assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. Two great machines define Arques. One is the Fontinettes Boat Lift, a hydraulic monster built in 1888 to hoist canal barges thirteen meters up the Neufosse Canal in a few minutes - replacing a chain of five locks that had taken half a day. It worked until 1967, when an even larger lock made it obsolete, and now its iron caisson sits silent in a park, gigantic and orphaned. The other machine is Arc International, headquartered here since the nineteenth century - the largest glassware manufacturer in the world, turning out the tumblers, wine glasses, and dessert plates that probably sit in the cupboards of your relatives. Arques is a small commune squeezed against Saint-Omer, but it has been making things, moving things, and lifting things on an industrial scale for one hundred and fifty years.

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Pir6mon assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Arques, Pas-de-Calais: The Lift That Carried Barges to the Sky

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mélanie Huguet, CC BY-SA 3.0. When the Neufosse Canal was cut in the 1820s to link the Aa to the Lys, engineers had to solve a problem: the land rose more than thirteen meters between Saint-Omer and Aire-sur-la-Lys, and a staircase of five conventional locks at Fontinettes was so slow that barges waited a ful...

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Image: Mélanie Huguet | CC BY-SA 3.0

Arques, Pas-de-Calais: The Glass Town

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JackyM59, CC BY-SA 4.0. If you have eaten in a French restaurant, you have probably drunk from Arques. Arc International - originally Verrerie Cristallerie d'Arques - was founded in 1825 and turned the town into one of Europe's great industrial centres. At its mid-twentieth-century peak the company empl...

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Image: JackyM59 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Arques, Pas-de-Calais: A Battle Nobody Remembers

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Laurent Petit, Public domain. In April 1303, in the angry aftermath of the Battle of the Golden Spurs - when Flemish weavers had butchered the flower of French chivalry at Courtrai - another battle was fought here. The Flemish won again, briefly. Then, in July 1340, the English commander Robert III of Artois ...

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Image: Laurent Petit | Public domain

Arques, Pas-de-Calais: Marshes and the Audomarois

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Pir6mon assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. North-east of the town, the Audomarois marshes spread out across the flatlands of French Flanders - a maze of canals, drainage ditches, and floating market gardens that has been worked since the Middle Ages. The Parc Naturel Regional des Caps et Marais d'Opale stretches from thes...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Pir6mon assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0