Veenkerk #2

I showed you the Veenkerk yesterday and told you a little about it's history, let's have a closer look at this tiny Peat Church today. Stepping inside brings you in a narrow hall, and then..

..a very basic church room with 6 chairs on each side facing the altar. We visited the church on Dec 26, hence the Christmas tree.

Veenkerk #1

The Veenkerk ("Peat Church") in the village of Barger-Compascuum was a small Roman Catholic church. It was built in 1874 in the raised bogs ('hoogveen' in Dutch) in this area, to serve those who lived and worked here to cultivate this area. Around the 1920s the church was in a bad state, and at at same time had become too small for the growing number of churchgoers -so it was decided to build a new and bigger church. The photo shows a replica of the original Veenkerk, which can be found at the Veenpark open-air museum now.

Baking bread

On Boxing Day at the Veenpark open-air museum these men were baking bread the traditional way. In the old days, instead of inside a farm kitchen the ovens in which bread was baked were outside in a separate building. They were mostly very basic and built of bricks, with a small half round masonry oven.

We bought a freshly-baked raisin bread to take home. Delicious with some butter!

a shoe with a thatched roof

A picture taken in the open-air museum Veenpark, Barger Compascuum