Sunset on the island

Island Stories #12 Sunset in Westenschouwen.

When I return to the island, one of the first things I do is watch the sunset from the top of the dunes near the village of Westenschouwen. It is a reassuring thought that this spot is always there and that I can always return. However, the sunset is never the same, and it will never fail to amaze me in its beautiful display of changing colors.

Sunset as seen from the dunes of Westenschouwen (photo Alexander Verbeek)

In its heyday in the fifteenth century, Westenschouwen was a settlement of some importance. The main source of income was initially the herring fishery in the North Sea. Herring was not only sold locally and regionally upstream along the Scheldt but also in English ports. But gradually, trade became more important. Products such as wine and salt from France, wool, oats, lead, cloth, and coal from England, wood, grain, and potash from the southern Baltic ports of Gdansk and Tallinn, and iron from Sweden were brought in and transited.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the prosperity in the village quickly came to an end because the merchants left for Zierikzee due to the silting up of the harbor. As a result, the village shrank into a hamlet with a few houses. The tower of the fourteenth-century village church has remained the longest visible old element of the village as a ruin because it was only demolished in 1845.

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Notes:

https://www.zeeuwseankers.nl/verhaal/verdronken-havenbuurt-van-westenschouwen-de-zee-neemt-de-zee-geeft