These wealthy families built public places like hospitals and charitable institutions. New monasteries were also established in the city: the Augustinians, Carmelites, Dominicans, and Friars Minor. For unmarried women and widows, two large beginages (a complex of houses with a small church or chapel and a hospital, an isolation room for the infectiously ill, stables, a chicken coop, a brewery, gardens, and meadows) were built thanks to Countess Joanna van Constantinopel - Sint-Elisabeth and Onze-Lieve-Vrouw ter Hoye.
