Broek in Waterland 1

On Saturday 15 July 2017 I made another trip, this time through the province of North Holland. Very early I took the train to Amsterdam Central. There my journey through nine different places started with a bus ride to Broek in Waterland. When I got off the bus I walked through the small tunnel under the road only to discover that the post office was on the side I just stepped out of the bus. I walked back and a minute later I reached the small neighbourhood supermarket that held the post office. The datestamp was still in the box which meant I made the first impressions with this postmark.

Broek in Waterland is a town in the province of North Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Waterland, and is situated about 8 km south of Purmerend and 8 km northeast of Amsterdam. In the 17th and 18th century, the town was a popular residence for merchants and seafarers from Amsterdam. Due to its monument status, much of its history has been preserved.

Many of the houses in the village date back to before 1850. Before 1940 there had been only limited housing development. This meant that many houses were divided to accommodate several families under the same roof. The church of Broek in Waterland was built before 1400 and was dedicated to Saint Nicolas. On 26 September 1573 the church was razed to the ground by Spaniards during the Eighty Years' War. In 1628 the inhabitants of Broek in Waterland started to rebuild the church on the foundations of the old building.

The pulpit was donated to the church in 1685 by a wealthy couple who were married there in 1641. It is made of ebony, rosewood and pallisander wood, which give it a dark colour and delicate texture. The church organ was built in 1832 by Wander Beekes. The church was extensively renovated in 1989. During this renovation, the original ceiling frescoes of cherubs and fruit garlands were rediscovered under old layers of paint.

Broek in Waterland was a popular vacation village for sea captains in the 1600s. The town has always been famous for its cleanliness. Many 17th and 18th century travel books of foreign travellers mentioned the cleanliness and tidiness of the village. The extreme cleanliness of Broek in Waterland led French visitors in the first half of the eighteenth century to dub this dairying village "le temple de la propreté hollandaise".

Broek in Waterland was a separate municipality until 1991, when it was merged with Waterland.

City/town:         Broek in Waterland

Municipality:     Waterland

Area:                10,70 km² (Waterland 115,66 km²)

Population:       2.728 (2018) (Waterland 17.306, 1 January 2019)

Website:           waterland.nl

Post office

't Winkeltje Wals-Schokker

Zuideinde 15

1151 CN  BROEK IN WATERLAND

Date sent: 15 July 2017

Date postmark: 15 July 2017

Date received: 18 July 2017

Number of days: 3

Envelope in collection: 234

Zoetermeer 14

The last stop of the day was Zoetermeer, that I reached by train from Gouda. there I had a meeting with Cees Janssen. He coordinates the catalogue of Dutch datestamps and all collectors send scans to him to be included in the catalogue. We went for coffee in the city centre and I got the last postmark of the day at the parcel point in a public toilet. Apart from the new datestamp they also had the old one.

Zoetermeer is a city in the Western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. A small village until the late 1960s, it had 6.392 inhabitants in 1950. By 2013 this had grown to 123.328, making it the third largest population centre in the province of South Holland, after Rotterdam and The Hague. It is part of the Haaglanden conurbation. The name Zoetermeer (Dutch for "freshwater lake") refers to the former lake north of the town (reclaimed in 1614). Because the name literally translates as "sweet lake" local residents have dubbed Zoetermeer "Sweet Lake City".

In the tenth century Zoetermeer was a small village primarily home to farmers and fishermen. In the 13th century a village centre was formed, which still exists as the historic Dorpsstraat. Until the 17th century there was a lake called the Zoetermeer. A reminder of this is the "Zoetermeerse Plas" in the Noord Aa recreation area at the northern edge of town; this artificial lake was created when tons of sand were needed to lay the foundation for new housing development, and the area north of Zoetermeer was a good source of this resource. Until 1935 the village centre was split into two villages, Zoetermeer and Zegwaard. The standard of living at the time was said to be higher in Zoetermeer than in Zegwaard. Seghwaert, an older way of spelling of Zegwaard, is now the name of a neighbourhood outside the old village centre.

Zoetermeer began to grow slightly when the first train service came around 1868. A few decades later the Numico factory started near the station. The real growth started in 1966, when there was an urgent need of houses from people around The Hague. From then they started to build new quarters around the old village centre, so Zoetermeer began to grow and became a city in the meantime.

Although contemporary Zoetermeer has the image of a modern city, there are still remains of the past. Like the old village centre with its small houses and the church with late medieval 15th-century clock tower, and the old farms, surrounded by modern houses nowadays.

Lake Dobbe divides the old town from the new city centre, with the medieval village centre on one side of the lake and the modern high-rise and skyscrapers on the other side.

City/town:         Zoetermeer

Municipality:     Zoetermeer

Area:                37,05 km²

Population:       124.947 (1 January 2019)

Website:           zoetermeer.nl

Parcel point

2theloo Stadshart Zoetermeer

Westwaarts 49

2711 AD  ZOETERMEER
(the parcel point closed somewhere in 2018)

stadshart.nl/2thelootoiletsmore

Date sent: 14 July 2017

Date postmark: 14 July 2017

Date received: 15 July 2017

Number of days: 1

Envelope in collection: 233

Gouda 11

From Gouderak I took the bus to Gouda. There was a choice of post locations in the city, but I went to the Primera on he Markt, the central square of Gouda. It is where the old town hall of Gouda is that features on the 'Mooi Nederland' stamp, so it was a logical choice to get a datestamp. They also had the old postmark Gouda - Markt, which they hadn't returned to PostNL because of the street name Markt. There were a lot of requests for it from tourists.

Gouda is a city and municipality in the west of the Netherlands, between Rotterdam and Utrecht, in the province of South Holland, famous for its Gouda cheese, stroopwafels, many grachten, smoking pipes, and its 15th-century city hall. Its array of historic churches and other buildings makes it a very popular day trip destination.

Around the year 1100, the area where Gouda now is located was swampy and covered with a peat forest, crossed by small creeks such as the Gouwe. Along the shores of this stream near the current market and city hall, peat harvesting began in the 11th and 12th centuries. In 1139, the name Gouda is first mentioned in a statement from the Bishop of Utrecht. In the 13th century, the Gouwe was connected to the Oude Rijn (Old Rhine) by means of a canal and its mouth at the Hollandse IJssel was developed into a harbour. Castle Gouda was built to protect this harbour. This shipping route was used for trade between Flanders and France with Holland and the Baltic Sea. In 1272, Floris V, Count of Holland, granted city rights to Gouda, which by then had become an important location. City-canals or grachten were dug and served as transport ways through the town.

Great fires in 1361 and 1438 destroyed the city. In 1572, the city was occupied by Les Gueux (Dutch rebels against the Spanish King) who also committed arson and destruction. In 1577 the demolition of Castle Gouda began.

In the last quarter of the 16th century, Gouda had serious economic problems. It recovered in the first half of the 17th century and even prospered between 1665 and 1672. But its economy collapsed again when war broke out in 1672 and the plague decimated the city in 1673, even affecting the pipe industry. After 1700, Gouda enjoyed a period of progress and prosperity until 1730. Then another recession followed, resulting in a long period of decline that lasted well into the 19th century. Gouda was one of the poorest cities in the country during that period.

Starting in 1830, demolition of the city walls began. The last city gate was torn down in 1854. Only from the second half of the 19th century onward did Gouda start to profit from an improved economic condition. New companies, such as Stearine Kaarsenfabriek (Stearine Candle Factory) and Machinale Garenspinnerij (Mechanized Yarn Spinnery), acted as the impetus to its economy. In 1855, the railway Gouda-Utrecht began to operate. In the beginning of the 20th century, large-scale development began, extending the city beyond its moats.

From 1940 on, back-filling of the city moats and city-canals, the grachten, began. But because of protests from city dwellers and revised policies of city planners, Gouda did not continue back-filling moats and city-canals, now considered historically valuable. In 1944, the railway station was damaged during an Allied bombardment, killing 8 and wounding 10 persons. This bombardment was intended to destroy the railroad connecting The Hague and Rotterdam to Utrecht.

After the war, the city started to expand and nearly tripled in size. New neighbourhoods were built. Over the last years there has been a shift from expanding the city towards urban renewal and gentrification.

City/town:         Gouda

Municipality:     Gouda

Area:                18,11 km²

Population:       73.161 (1 January 2019)

Website:           gouda.nl

Parcel point

Primera Herman Kok (since 1 July 2019: Primera Markt)

Markt 68A

2801 JM  GOUDA

primera.nl/primera-gouda-herman-kok

facebook.com/primeramarkt/

Date sent: 14 July 2017

Date postmark: 14 July 2017

Date received: 15 July 2017

Number of days: 1

Envelope in collection: 232

Gouderak 1

In Moordrecht I had to wait for some time because it was raining too hard to continue my trip. When it stopped I travelled to the next village: Gouderak. That lies on the other side of the Hollandsche IJssel river. There was a small ferry that took only a few minutes to get to the other side. Tickets were 1 euro for pedestrians. After arriving on the other side it started raining again, even heavier than before.

I hurried down the dyke to the small shopping centre where the book store with the post office was. Inside were four men drinking coffee. I was offered a cup too. I got the new datestamp and after it almost stopped raining left the shop for the next bus.

Gouderak is a small village that is part of the municipality of Krimpenerwaard in the province of south Holland. It is one of the youngest river villages in the Krimpenerwaard. The first mention of Gouderak is in 1274. A 'rak' is a straight part of a rover between two bends. In the 15th century farmers settle in the area and two centuries later industry is found in Gouderak in the form of roperies and brick works.

In the early 1980s Gouderak got international fame because of a large poison scandal. A new neighbourhood with almost one hundred houses was built on ground that was heavily contaminated with poisonous waste that was dumped into a shallow part of the river. All houses had to be demolished, the ground cleaned and the neighbourhood rebuilt. The work was finished in 2011.

Until 1985 Gouderak was a seperate municipality when it merged into the new municipality of Ouderkerk. Ouderkerk merged with other municipalities into Krimpenerwaard on 1 January 2015.

City/town:         Gouderak

Municipality:     Krimpenerwaard

Area:                10,35 km² (Krimpenerwaard 161,3 km²)

Population:       2.630 (2018) (Krimpenerwaard 56.043, 1 January 2019)

Website:           krimpenerwaard.nl

Post office

Boekhandel Kamerbeek

Kranepoort 18

2831 AK  GOUDERAK

facebook.com/Kamerbeek-Gouderak

Date sent: 14 July 2017

Date postmark: 14 July 2017

Date received: 15 July 2017

Number of days: 1

Envelope in collection: 231