Sited on the old Roman road between Ipp and Menin in Flanders,

a nondescript road junction became during the years of 1914-18 the most feared spot on the western front.

This was Hellfire Corner.

We're back in Flanders this week in the battlefields around the city of Eap to visit what was probably one of the most iconic, infamous locations on the Western Front, Hellfire Corner.

But before we get there, we're going to start in EAP itself and follow a not dissimilar

journey that the soldiers made themselves during a big proportion of the First World War

to get from the city of Eap up to Hellfire Corner and then beyond that to the front lines

or their gun positions.

So we're starting this in the main square of Eap outside the Rebuilt Cloth Hall because when we stand in

the city of Eap today we have to remember that everything that we see here all these magnificent

buildings rebuilt in a medieval style are rebuilt. the whole city was completely destroyed in the First World War

and even almost halfway through it in 1916 if we look at some of the aerial photographs of EAPE we see that already it begins to look like the ruins of some lost civilization and a world somehow, an ancient world, departed.

So the original of the cloth hall in front of us was once the centre of the European cloth trade.

This was a market hall where cloth was bought and sold.

And all the little doors that we can see along it were all the

individual stalls of the market sellers selling their wares to be then shipped off by the canal

systems in this area and barges off to other parts of europe so this was a hub of commerce at that time

and led to the city of epe becoming a wealthy part of Flanders, an area which

had good drainage, good sewers, fresh water, so if you lived here, you stood a good chance

of living for quite a few years compared to other parts of Europe. Eventually it would have

good defences, the big walls, the ramparts that surrounded Eap.

All of this built on the taxation of the trade that took place in buildings like this.

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