GORINCHEM – The excavations at the Chalk Street are increasingly beginning to provide an image of the old historic city center as it looked at the end of the 14de, early 15sde century must have looked like. Archaeologist Sjaak Mooren of the Research and Consultancy Agency Baac discovered yesterday that next to the Hof van Arkel there is a complete fourteenth century neighboring building.
The courtyard itself is larger than initially assumed. So far, only half of the building has probably been excavated and the other half is located under house number 14. Mooren: “The neighbouring building must have been home to posh people. Rich merchants perhaps, or lower nobility, but we don’t know who they were yet. We are currently excavating the cesspit and hope to find more clues about the residents there or in the garden that belonged to the building. There is something nice to tell about the cesspit. A pit was dug at the time and it is surrounded by wickerwork, consisting of branches and twigs. We will capture that in a photo, because it still looks great now, but tomorrow there will only be powder left.”
Wickerwork pit seen to the south
In the cesspool itself, volunteers are busy shoveling and using a metal detector. They are standing almost up to their knees in the groundwater and are scooping away the sludge layer by layer. “We have now found fragments of a large bowl. We will find the rest.” Apart from a chicken bone and a hand-sharpened piece of wood, nothing special has come out of the cesspool yet. But around noon there is success. A slightly damaged black vase comes to the surface. It is not a small one.
Colonnade
Mooren is more enthusiastic about the fact that the contours of the Hof van Arkel are becoming increasingly clear. “Between the neighbouring building and the courtyard, there used to be a narrow street before the facade of the courtyard begins. Then the building recedes slightly to the rear, we find another corridor or colonnade and the other side wing is most likely located under the house at number 14. We can only get to that if it is ever demolished.”
Mooren makes it clear in sweeping gestures how large the courtyard must have been. The spot where he is standing was most likely the former garden, which perhaps extended to Struisvogelstraat. “We are really running out of time. That is why we want to examine the remains of both buildings very carefully and we can only roughly dig through the entire back yard. And then we can only hope that we do not come across all kinds of walls, because then we really have a problem”, says Mooren, who is very grateful that so many volunteers are helping him.
All research results are carefully documented and photographed. If the excavations are forced to be stopped on September 29, at least a lot has been recorded for posterity and much more is known about the history of Gorcum. But who were the Van Arkels' neighbors?
September 11, 2002
Gorcumse Courant