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Town fires in 's-Hertogenbosch (NL)
Fires often mean caesuras to
a cities building history. During the 15th century two
big town fires happened in ‘s-Hertogenbosch in a short interval of
time, in 1419 and 1463. The first fire trended to the west
alongside the Hinthamerstraat, the second fire emerged in the
Verwerstraat and trended to the North. Both fires stopped on the
central marketplace. A question addressed to building historians
was, how to make it possible to determine these fires and their
spatial dimensions using only the historical building stock which
has been preserved up to today. In order to be able to answer this
question, the Antiquities and Monuments Office of ‘s-Hertogenbosch
decided to work together with the dendrochronological laboratory of
Pressler GmbH. Thus an amount of 348 samples from 94
buildings/objects has been analyzed. About 94% of the samples could
be dated dendrochronologically. As yet no limits of the two town
fires could be deduced from the comparison of dating results and
object locations. A possible reason for this might partly be the
fact that many objects are located widespread all over the city.
But even the 21 objects which are situated closely alongside the
Hinthamerstraat did not show a clear connection to the town
fires.
Great fire of London, September 4th 1666. Resource: Wikipedia
The oldest objects investigated so far, were erected about 25 years after the town fire happened. The chart below shows a peak at the time of 1460-1499. Astonishingly 16 buildings dating all to 1460-1470 were not erected in Verwerstraat. Only one building in Waterstraat and another building in Kolperstraat seem to be erected as a result of the fire in the adjacent Verwerstraat. This trend continues in the 1470s and 1480s. Ten of eleven buildings were erected in a place, where a spatial connection to the fire cannot be deduced.
Although no limits of the town fires could be determined, the investigation still has been able to show, that the town fires resulted in a big amount of new buildings, which were –like in other cities- erected in a period of time rather short after the catastrophe happened. Possibly this boom of new buildings has been stimulated additionally by subsidies of the administration. In the subsequent years the amount of new built houses slowly goes back to the level of the years before the town fires. For more information, please see the homepage of Antiquities and Monuments Office of ‘s-Hertogenbosch.
Text and graphic: Gemeente 's-Hertogenbosch,
Maarten Enderman
FR, Normandy: A workshop for carpenters at the Château de Gaillon, 25.05. - 02.06.2013
and some more Dendrodates for the
Normandy.
NL, Schoonebeek - southern Drenthe area:
A systematical acquisition of the historical
building stock
DE, Eastern Frisia - Romanesque churches:
Serial investigation of wooden
roofs
NL, 's-Hertogenbosch:
Is it possible to localize
historical town fires using
Dendrochronology?
FR, Normandy:
Renaissance of Granges after the Hundred Years'
War
NL, Terborg:
Archaeologists discovered a
big medieval settlement area
RO, Central Romania:
Enigmatic medieval carpentry
© Pressler GmbH, Planung und Bauforschung, D-49838
Gersten/Emsland
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