Holiday Apartment Waterpoort near Beemster

Apartments Waterpoort - Beemster

Excursion to Beemster:

Until the seventeenth century everything in the Beemster was water. Firstly dykes were needed and then windmills to drain the area. The row of windmills along the Noordervaart near Schermerhorn is famous in the whole world. Even now these windmills keep the water in the polder at the right level. A 42-kilometer dyke surrounds De Beemster. It was built in the beginning of the seventeenth century to call a halt to the erosion of land caused by the broad river De Bamestra. The name Jan Adriaanszoon Leeghwater is unbreakably connected to the reclamation. But it were the rich VOC-salesmen that made it possible financially. It didn't take long when beautiful houses and farms were built here. There are still farms, those along the Rijperweg for instance, where proudly is shown how life was in past centuries.

Those farms together with the dyke form the characteristics of the Beemster-polder. The polder with its straight lanes according to the Renaissance-style and geographic classification is happily still the same as it was. Because of this De Beemster is brought forward for the list of Worldmonument from UNESCO.

Not only is De Beemster a very important agricultural area with beautiful Tulip-fields, but it also has a cultural past. The home of the known writer Betje Wolff is found untouched in the Middenbeemster. Here you can find a museum with a few style-rooms the workroom of the eighteenth century writer.