GORINCHEM – Last Monday, the Archeology working group of the municipality of Gorinchem started the excavation of the Huis Paffenrode on the Barracks SquareThis is being done under the supervision of archaeologist Pieter Floore from the University of Amsterdam, who was also involved in the research on the Happy Corner and the castle of the Lords of Arkel at Wijdschild.
Last Tuesday, the first foundations of the house were discovered. This week, a well and a water cellar were also discovered. On the same site, archaeologists also found a ditch or canal that is much older than the remains of the Paffenrode House. In this filled-in ditch were shards from the fifteenth century, about a hundred years before the Paffenrode House was built.
Strips of sawn beef bones with drill holes
''Fifty-maker'
A special find from this ditch was the waste from a so-called 'fifty-maker'. This was the medieval name for someone who made rosaries. Cattle bones were used for this. The waste consists of cattle bones sawn into strips with the holes for the beads in them. Ranjith Jayasena, an archaeology student in Amsterdam, is very pleased with the first week of the excavations. Jayasena has been involved in the excavations from the beginning. 'You never know what you will find when you start,' he says. Every excavation you do is different. My field of study is the Middle Ages, so this is perfect. It is not so much about the finds, such as shards, but about the dating of what we dig up. Thanks to pottery, you can get a good time determination. This gives you an image of the city, which you cannot get from the history books. Excavating is patient work. 'You have to have the deviation that you enjoy doing it,' laughs Ranjith Jayasena.
Making rosary beads
History
Around 1595, the city pensioner Adriaen van Weresteyn had a large country house built there in a large courtyard. Such inner city gardens from the seventeenth century were world-leading in terms of garden architecture in the Netherlands. The country house that was given the name 'Huis van Paffenrode' was demolished between 1755 and 1771. In 1618, it was bought by bailiff Jacob van Paffenrode, married to Maria van Arkel. They, and later their son Johan van Paffenrode, were the most famous residents in the seventeenth century in the world. Later, this house was inhabited by bailiff Louis Huygens van Zuylichem, the son of the famous poet Constantine HuygensDue to dilapidation, the building was demolished in the second half of the eighteenth century. In 1826, construction of a barracks complex began on the site. The part where the country house stood was then used as a drill ground. The barracks complex was demolished in 1969.
Task
No detailed images of the house are known. The seventeenth-century cartographers Blaeu and Wijdtmans drew a large country house with stables and a coach house surrounded by ornamental gardens and an orchard on their maps of Gorinchem on the site of the current Kazerneplein. However, it is not clear how the house was built. It is up to the archaeologists to map this.
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August 19, 1997