The Netherlands Yesterday

A beautifully-kept open air museum at Enkhuizen recalls the history and culture of villages around the former Zuider Zee. What was once an inland arm of the North Sea was closed off in 1932 to form the IJselmeer. Enkhuizen was one of the villages on the edge of the IJselmeer which had to readjust to the loss of salt-water fishing. The Zuider Zee Museum was begun, and the village entered the tourism industry.

We took the train out of Amsterdam Central Station, and then one of the Museum boats from Enkhuizen station the short distance along the coast to the entrance.

A display map at the entrance and signposts show the way around the compact site - which has a lot to see in small groups of buildings.

Left: lime kilns and a slaking house near the entrance. Sea shells were burnt with coal dust or peat in the kilns, then slaked with water to make one of the components of cement. Right: a green-painted house from Lagedijk belonging to a prosperous family. To its right a butcher's shop and beyond that a cheese warehouse (white structure) and then a building used for a modern video show about local historic events. Extreme right (smaller building) a bakery with shop.

Fish are smoked in the wooden shed from Barradeel, where nets and other implements are shown. Every day there are freshly smoked herring to be sampled.

Rather unusual: a steam powered laundry, operating daily. A rotating wooden barrel like an old-style milk churn; a steel revolving drum and a belt-driven mangle are all in use, powered by a small, horizontal, steam engine.

The steam engine in the laundry, and a cooper's workshop in a building from Vollenhove. The contents of the cooperage were obtained locally in Enkhuizen.

These pictures are of a replica of a school from Kollum in the Frisian Islands. The first room (right) shows a scene of 1905 with wall map and spelling aids - and oil lighting. The other room (left) shows a 1930s style. We happened to sit opposite this family group of two grandparents with their two grandchildren on the train to Enkhuizen. Here they are experiencing a 1930-type of teaching, spied through the classroom door.

The inside story: left - the house belonging to the steam laundry. Centre and right: the Lagedijk house - parlour and kitchen.

Bakery and patisserie from Hoorn; cheese in a Landsmeer warehouse; herring at the Barradeel smoke house; a butcher's shop from Purmerend

A sailing barge on the town canal and a wind-driven pump from the polders of West Friesland.

Near to the main display area is a reconstruction of the harbour at Buurterhaven on the island of Marken. The cart has baskets full of peat.