My name is Marcella van Hoecke, I was almost a hundred when I breathed my last in 2008. The last breath, I sometimes think, of the last beguine of this court, because I was just that. 

Until I became too old and weak for it, I was Grand Lady here. Don't think I lived in as great ornament as my illustrious predecessors. I was of very plain birth. And there were so few of us by now, in this increasingly abandonded little court, that I also had to keep the church open.

I was twenty-five when I became a beguine, in 1935. Still a child, actually. I came here on retreat and suddenly I knew what I would be. I had three aunts who were also beguines. I was stepping into a tradition. I didn't know then that I would become the end point of it.

It was a good life, a beautiful life. We got up at half past five in the morning and we prayed and worked until eight in the evening. We were not nuns, nor were we cloistered sisters. We had to earn our living.

I was good at embroidery and so brought in some money. About one and a half euros a piece I got for it. I was told that was much, much too cheap, but I loved doing it. I never regretted it. Sometimes people would give us donations to pray for the memory of their deceased relatives. We would do so.

But there were fewer and fewer of us. The cottages and convents began to fall empty, gently decaying. You could sometimes hear the stones creaking or sighing like old, tired joints. Maybe I was just hearing my own joints.

When I entered here, I thought that beguine life would last forever, as it had continued to do all these centuries, as it had survived wars, epidemics, and ever-changing rulers.

But silently, someone fell ill here and didn't recover, and then somewhere else, and no more young bodies came to take over from us. 

And suddenly we were no more.

Regrettable, I think. 

But when I look around me now, when I run my gaze over the treetops and the roof lines, something of our spirit has been preserved after all. Because it is not just the pointing and mortar that hold up the facades here, or the beams and fireplaces.

It is still the people who live here together, behind the gate, that grant this place its soul.