Burgh-Haamstede, Renesse, Noordwelle

The salty air, the lovely beaches and the many, many holiday parks, hotels and restaurants... Since the 1960s, the Kop van Schouwen has been completely set up for tourism and recreation. It is hard to imagine that several military battles have taken place here. Yet the region has seen many war battles. Looting by Vikings, the Battle between Holland and Flanders, the Eighty Years' War against the Spaniards and the Second World War: the Schouwen landscape was the scene of these battle scenes.

Around the year 900, Zeeland had five Ringwalburgs, which were built to protect the population from Viking raids. The places where the fortresses stood can be recognised by their place names. Domburg, Middelburg, Oost-Souburg, Oostburg and Burgh. Many mysteries still exist around these primitive structures. The Ringwalburg in Burgh is a reconstructed version of the one from the Middle Ages. Can you figure out the riddles?

We continue through history. At the time of the late Middle Ages, counts were in power. There were a number of noblemen in Schouwen, including Witte van Haemstede and the knights from the Van Cats family. They lived in built seigneuries: houses or castles that had arisen from wooden motte castles. The villages of Noordwelle and Zuidwelle together formed the seigniory of Welland, with Noordwelle to the north and Zuidwelle to the south of a creek. Where you now find the holiday homes of Hofstede Welland, a castle must have once stood. Lordships from that time that have survived are Slot Moermond and Slot Haamstede. Besides housing, they were of great importance as defensive fortifications.

The counts of Holland and Flanders, despite their mutual feudal lordship system in which Holland borrowed the Zeeland landscape from Flanders, were in constant conclave with each other. In these stories, we encounter the Zeeland noblemen again. Finally, in 1323, at the Peace of Paris, it was settled that Zeeland and the Scheldt region belonged to Holland.

When these conflicts were finally resolved, two centuries later the Spaniards arrived. The Eighty Years' War took place. The now resurrected Cornelius Church played an important role in the liberation.

Jumping ahead in time, we now find ourselves in the era of the Second World War. Scattered in the Zeepeduinen and in the Slotbos are about 40 Second World War bunkers, part of the Atlantic Wall. Slot Moermond and Slot Haamstede were also part of this line of defence built by the German occupiers. One of the largest and most important bunkers was the Wing bunker. From here, commands and information were transmitted to the surrounding bunkers.

The Kop van Schouwen was one of the longest occupied parts of the Netherlands. The Ten of Renesse had to pay for this with hanging in late 1944, a punishment that had never before been given in the Netherlands during the war.

As beautiful and peaceful as this tourist piece of Zeeland is now, it was such a battleground in the centuries before. Can you imagine it?

This Premium route was compiled by our editor: Anne de Zwaan.