Schoonhoven

Schoonhoven has made silver since the seventeenth century and still does: there are working silversmiths in the town, the Dutch vocational school for goldsmithing and watchmaking is here, and the Nederlands Zilvermuseum holds the national silver collection with several thousand pieces covering Dutch domestic and ecclesiastical silver, the assay marks and the trade. That concentration in a town of twelve thousand is what makes it worth the trip. The town itself sits behind a dyke on the Lek with a small harbour running into the centre, a fifteenth-century Waag, a leaning church tower and a town hall of 1452. A ferry crosses the river. The Lopikerwaard around it is one of the more legible pieces of medieval land reclamation, with the long parallel strips of the cope settlement pattern still visible from any road.

History

Around 1220 a castle was built by the mouth of a stream called the Zevender on the Lek, and the town grew up beside it; it is first named, as Sconhoven, in 1247 and received town rights in 1280. Walls and gates were built around 1350, and the Veerpoort, the only medieval gate left, still works as a flood barrier (Wikipedia, Schoonhoven).

Highlights

• A working silver town - smiths, the national craft school and the trade still here.
• The national silver collection - several thousand pieces in the Zilvermuseum.
• A harbour into the centre - the town behind its dyke on the Lek.
• Medieval land division - the long strip pattern of the Lopikerwaard around it.

When to go

April to October. A day.

Good to know

The museum closes on Mondays. Working workshops are businesses and visits need arranging. The ferry is seasonal and weather-dependent. The town is small.

Nearby

Gouda is west; Oudewater and its witch scales are north.

Key facts