De Rijp

De Rijp was a herring and whaling village on the Beemster lake, and its wealth in the seventeenth century went into timber houses with carved gables which survive in unusual numbers - the whole centre is protected. Jan Adriaanszoon Leeghwater was born here in 1575, a mill engineer and carpenter who worked out how to drain large lakes by ringing them with a dyke and a chain of windmills lifting water in stages, and applied it to the Beemster from 1607 - which took the lake this village fished and turned it into farmland, the Beemster polder now being on the UNESCO list as a model of Dutch land reclamation. The village lost its water and became inland. The Grote Kerk has a set of seventeenth-century stained glass windows, the town hall of 1630 is timber, and the museum covers Leeghwater and the whaling.

History

Before the lakes on either side were drained, De Rijp was a port with merchant ships trading across the seas, a herring fleet and larger ships that sailed regularly to Spitsbergen for whales; it was a separate municipality until 1970 (Wikipedia, De Rijp).

The main sights

• Carved timber houses - a protected centre from the whaling and herring wealth.
• Leeghwater's village - birthplace of the engineer who drained the surrounding lakes.
• A timber town hall of 1630 - standing on the square.
• Seventeenth-century glass - the window set in the Grote Kerk.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

What to expect

Church and museum keep short seasonal hours. The village is very small. The Beemster around it is flat farmland, of interest for the land pattern rather than scenery.

Nearby

The Beemster polder surrounds it; Alkmaar is north-west.

Key facts