Foto: www.gooienvechthistorisch.nl (SAGV233)
Historic Hilversum
Landscape
The moraine landscape in which Hilversum is located was created during the penultimate ice age when the landscape was covered with a thick layer of ice. The sliding ice left behind moraines of boulder clay, gravel, sand and boulders. The moraines between Laren and Huizen (36.7 meters) and those at Hilversum (25 meters) are foothills of the Utrechtse Heuvelrug, an elongated moraine that runs from the current Gooimeer coast to the Grebbeberg.
Agricultural green village
The burial mounds on the Gooi heide show that around 1500 BC. permanent people lived in and around Hilversum. From the sixth century on, the now known Gooi settlements arose. Hilversum became an independent municipality in 1424. Until the 17th century, Hilversum was one of the agricultural green villages in the Gooi. The village greens were triangular squares where the cattle were gathered in the evening to be put into stables in the village. The farms were mainly long gable farms consisting of an elongated main shape with gables on the short sides. At the front was the living area, the part was at the back and was accessible through doors in the side wall.
Textile industry
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the textile industry started to grow alongside the agricultural business. Spinning and weaving mills settled in the village, which began to grow from two cores. On the east side along the Groest, a long wide dirt road with village greens at the ends, and around the Kerkbrink, where in addition to the parish church, the Regthuys (where administration and justice took place).
The increasing population found shelter in former farms, which were converted into small back-to-back dwellings, and in weavers’ cottages. At the end of the eighteenth century, the textile industry was an important economic engine. In addition to weaving workshops, factories came up, workers’ houses were built and the directors had stately factory houses (a factory somewhere between a merchant and an industrialist) built.
Building
Little has been preserved of historic Hilversum. The Gothic church tower at the Grote Kerk on Kerkbrink is originally the oldest building. The origin of the tower goes back to 1481, but due to various fires it was rebuilt several times in the following centuries. From the second half of the eighteenth century, the ‘Farm of Houtman’ remains, a long gable farm on the Langestraat. The historic Spijkerpandjes on Kerkbrink, whose house originally dates from around 1770, were rebuilt in the 1990s.
Historic neigborhood
Rebuilding also took place in what is known as the ‘Historic Neighborhood’. In the early 21st century, a number of historic buildings that had to make way for new construction elsewhere in Hilversum were rebuilt between the Laanstraat and the Kruissteeg. The buildings were demolished brick by brick and rebuilt on the basis of contemporary techniques, with an eye for historical aspects. In the neighborhood you will find two 18th-century factory houses, the ‘White Farm’, a city farm with a special shaped facade (a crossing of a stepped and a bell gable) and a number of historic shop-houses.