Arkelstraat 102 | Blueband House (2011)

Tracks in the profile are accurately recorded

Monday October 31, 2011 started Hollandia Archaeologists commissioned by Port 6 the archaeological research at the site of the Bluebandhuis, corner of Arkelstraat-Rosmolensteeg. The beautiful October weather attracted a surprising number of Gorcumers to the well to take a look. Interested parties were kept informed of the latest developments on a daily basis via Twitter. Below is the diary.

Monday October 31

Already on the first day of the excavation it appears that the Bluebandhuis was built on the foundations of older buildings. These foundations were measured, drawn and photographed today. In addition to shards, a bone skate (glis) was also found. Tomorrow these foundations will be removed and the excavation pit will be deepened.

Tuesday the 1th of November

The pit was further deepened. The foundations found yesterday turned out to be founded with wood in turn. In the underlying raised layer, a buried water jug ​​of grey-baked earthenware was found, provisionally dated between 1275 and 1325. Upon further investigation, the jug appeared to contain 441 fragments of 41 skeletons of field mice. The jug was used to catch mice. Similar mousetraps were previously found during research in Kerk-Avezaath and Leidsche Rijn.

The application was very simple: first a narrow ditch was dug around the storage place, in which the pots half filled with water were then buried. Because it was difficult for the mouse to get out of the ditch, it automatically ended up in the pot with water.

Wednesday November 3

The profiles in the pit were drawn and described. It appears that a cobblestone street runs parallel to the Arkelstraat. This has been documented. Soil drillings in the clay bottom of the pit are a reason for partial further deepening of the pit (tomorrow). A nice find today was a small dagger.

Thursday, November 4

The pit was deepened to the peat. A thick tree trunk with bark is very suitable for dendrochronological research into age and origin. The front part of the pit was filled in, a new surface was constructed next to it. Here wood, walls and messy floors of monastery bricks. The shards found date from the fifteenth century.

Friday, November 5

The work in the second constructed work pit, adjacent to the first work pit, gives the same picture as the previous day. The most common finds are grey-baked pottery shards. This type of pottery was used from 1300-1450. The research is expected to take 2 weeks and is being carried out by Hollandia Archeologists in Zaandijk, supplemented by a few volunteers from Gorcum. The client is housing association Poort 6.

Monday, November 7

Work pit 2 is now 4 m. deep. Two manure pits, wood and clay layers came to light. In the profile (the pit walls) the stratification of the soil is now clearly visible. This is being drawn and then the pit will be partly deepened further. The finds today were mainly metals such as part of a horse spur, a worked mirror and a (pilgrim) badge.

Tuesday the 8th of November

Today a well with a beam foundation was found.

Wednesday November 9

The good news: the archaeologists have come across millstone fragments and large drilled wooden parts of the horse mill. The size of the bricks of the large water well is much smaller than what has been found so far under the Bluebandhuis. The well was constructed in the 19th century.

Thursday, November 10

For centuries now, a manure smell has been rising in the Rosmolensteeg. When deepening, many manure pits can be seen. Finds: large pieces of leather.

Friday, November 11

Under a wickerwork cesspit, a cesspit filled with 15th century pottery emerged. Many millstone fragments and important wood parts emerged from the northeast side of the workpit. Now the processing of the data and the finds begins. The interest in the excavation was inspiring for the archaeologists.

Hoogendijk, T. (2015) Late medieval settlement on the site of the Bluebandhuis in Gorinchem, Hollandia series 520, Zaandijk. flipbook | PDF (15 MB)

Can full of vermin to Rijksmuseum exhibition

From Thursday 2 May, an unusual find from Gorcum's soil can be seen in the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden: a medieval jug, ...

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The last treadmill in Amsterdam in 1911

Leasing

Mills were leased in Gorinchem. Records of this were kept in a lease book. Thanks to the lease book, it is known exactly which mills were present in this city in 1543. Aerdt de Roy Gijsbertsz. leased the Kleine Rosmolen and the Cansemolen for ƒ 540 and his brother-in-law Willem Gornelisz. the Grote Rosmolen and the two other windmills: the Arkelmolen and the Lazarusmolen; for this he paid ƒ 695 per year.

In 1543, Gorinchem had three windmills and two horse mills. When the sails of the windmills were stationary due to a lack of wind, it was the horse mills that ground the grain for the population. Horse mills are grinding devices that are set in motion by one or more horses. These horses then walk around constantly, causing the millstones to turn. Because of this circumstance, horse mills are not as tied to a specific location as, for example, windmills, which have no right to exist without a free wind catch. Horse mills could therefore be found in the middle of cities and that was indeed the case in Gorinchem.

Detail map by Jacob van Deventer (1558) with the horse mill marked as a circle

The Grote Rosmolen was located in the Arkelstraat directly opposite the Haarstraat on the northern corner of an alley, which is not for nothing called Rosmolensteeg carries. That horse mill, in which 16 horses were allowed to work, must have been located in a fairly large building. The Kleine Rosmolen, on the other hand, offered space for 12 horses and was located in the Boerenstraat, at that time still referred to as KrijtstraatIt was located directly behind De Doelen at the location where the Tuighuis or Arsenaal now stands.

Cleaning the streets

The mill tenants were bound by various provisions that sometimes seem very strange. For example, the miller who leased the Kleine Rosmolen was obliged to keep the street behind the Minderbroederklooster in the Arkelstraat clean and the tenant of the Grote Rosmolen had to clean the market square regularly. This meant nothing less than sweeping the broom over it once a month between Easter and 1 October and every 14 days in the autumn and winter. In case of negligence, the bailiff had it cleaned at his own expense, while he was allowed to charge the costs double to the defaulting mill tenant.

In 1550 Aerdt de Roy Gijsbertsz. leased the Grote Rosmolen and the Arkelmolen. His son Alardt de Roy Aertsz., who as befitted a good miller followed in his father's footsteps, was the tenant of the Kleine Rosmolen, the Cansemolen and the Lazarusmolen. Father and son De Roy were powerful men, because they were the only corn millers in the entire Land van Arkel. The city government of Gorinchem found all the mills in one hand undesirable and at the next lease a condition was added to the usual conditions: (...) Direct family ties between the tenants of the various mills were taboo from then on.

Mill King

In 1563, that prohibition is missing from the conditions, and not by accident. There is then only one tenant who leases all five Gorinchem mills for an amount of ƒ 1088, while a year earlier the mills together yielded only ƒ 652. There was now one uncrowned mill king in the city, who had the monopoly of grinding grains in a relatively large area. It was Aerdt de Roy, whose name had already been mentioned earlier as a mill tenant or mill master.

In any case, the fact is that on 8 July 1621 the following mills were transferred to private individuals in the usual manner by mayors in the presence of aldermen: (...) the Grote Rosmolen in the Arkelstraat. The buyer of the Grote Rosmolen and the windmill at the Arkelpoort was bound by similar conditions: he had to provide free milling services for the Oudemannenhuis and the Oudevrouwenhuis and also for the bailiff. The buyer of the Grote Rosmolen and the windmill at the Arkelpoort had to pay ƒ 4000 and also an annual lease of ƒ 150 on the windmill and ƒ 60 on the Grote Rosmolen. This person (Mr. Abraham Boxman) also managed to acquire the remaining part of the mill, so that he came to own it in its entirety, as well as the two associated houses in the Arkelstraat, which still housed a horse mill.

Siege

The horse mill was long out of date, but it still played a role in 1814. In January of that year, when Gorinchem was a besieged fortress, the two windmills were only allowed to grind grain for the enclosed garrison. The citizens were then exclusively dependent on the Grote Rosmolen. After the death of Mr. Abraham Boxman in 1856, after he had resigned as mayor of his home town two years earlier for health reasons, his daughter Margaretha Alida Hendrika, the wife of Mr. Frederik Gerrit Edmond Merkus van Gendt, inherited the windmill and the houses in the Arkelstraat, which had since been converted into a double house.

Busch, A.J. (1978) Mills in Gorinchem. Facts about the local mills over the centuries, Merewade, facets of Gorcum's past 1, Gorinchem. WorldCat | flipbook| PDF (8 MB)