While visiting the neighbourhood around Bleekveld, one can easily think of a 'begijnhof'. A begijnhof most of the time is a walled complex consisting of a courtyard and cottages originally built in the 14th-century for a group of pious, charitable women (the Beguines). A central place was given to a chapel or church. Occasionaly there was also a graveyard. The begijnhof is a specific urban feature of the southern part of the former Netherlands (including nowadays Belgium and parts of northern France). All together there were 70 begijnhof complexes. Just a few were found in the north of The Netherlands and in Wallonia.
Professor Henri Pirenne explained the success of the Beguines by the fact that, due to violence, military operations and war, there were far more women than men. In his view single women saw no other way to survive than to unite and ask the rich for help. In exchange they would look after the sick and poor. In a begijnhof the rules were less strict than in a traditional convent.
In Flanders to this day remain 26 begijnhof complexes of which 13 are listed by Unesco. In alphabetical order these are: 1. Bruges/Brugge, 2. Dendermonde, 3. Diest, 4. Gent (Klein Begijnhof), 5. Hoogstraten, 6. Kortrijk, 7. Leuven (Groot-Begijnhof), 8. Lier, 9. Mechelen (Groot Begijnhof), 10. Sint-Amandsberg, 11. Sint-Truiden, 12. Tongeren and 13. Turnhout.
In The Netherlands only the sites in Amsterdam and Breda survived. Bergen op Zoom possessed a begijnhof from 1498 until 1580, when the buildings were demolished during religious riots. Not much later the authorities realized fortifications on the same spot. In modern Bergen op Zoom only the name remains: Begijnhofstraat. On the other side of the busy Noordsingel, part of the town’s centre ring, we find a street with little white washed houses and cobble stones as well as a green, called Bleekveld, where once sheets were laid out in the sunlight to bleach.
It is not difficult to sense here what the atmosphere in the nearby begijnhof may have been like... Even the signs help: 1. no entrance and 2. a reference to medical support.
A fragment of the map by Jacob van Deventer, ca 1545.
The begijnhof on a map published by F. Hogenberg in
1581.
The place of the begijnhof (ca no. 12) on a reconstruction
by Han Bos, 2001.
On a map in the book Historische stedenatlas van Neder-
land.
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