GORINCHEM – Many old monastery bricks, five writing pens, attributes that refer to earlier pilgrimages to Heukelum, skulls of a chicken and a small dog, a water well covered by an enormous millstone, shards of pottery and, as a temporary highlight, a double barrel well. With two wooden barrels on top of each other, with an open cart wheel as a bottom, these seventeenth-century Gorcumers already had a luxurious toilet.
The excavation has been underway for two weeks now by archaeologists on the site at the Chalk Street, opposite the Sint Jans tower, where construction of a V&D department store will start this autumn.
According to the working group, it is too early to conclude that the sought-after Court of the Lords of Arkel, the founders of the city of Gorinchem, was actually located at that location. It does seem certain that a city school was located here in the fourteenth century, as evidenced by the pens that were used to write on a slate six centuries ago.
August 28, 2002
Gorcumse Courant