United Kingdom
Photo: Google Streetview, 2024
In the southeast of England, at the mouth of the Thames, lies the town of Canvey Island. Four centuries ago, it was in danger of disappearing into the sea, until in 1622 the Dutch came to the rescue with their ‘water management skills’. After a successful reclamation, many Dutch workers continued to live there, perhaps including one or more Oud-Aalten residents.
In the early 17th century, Sir Henry Appleton, the most important landowner on Canvey Island at the time, met the Dutchman Joas Croppenburg. He proposed to drain Canvey Island in the same way as had been done in Amsterdam. In 1622, several landowners of Canvey Island signed an agreement and Croppenburg hired another Dutchman, Cornelius Vermuyden, to reclaim the island.
Vermuyden recruited between two and three hundred compatriots to get the job done. They built a series of seawalls and successfully made Canvey Island habitable by reclaiming 15 kilometres of land by embanking the island with locally mined chalk, limestone and heavy swamp clay.
Dutch colony
After Canvey Island was drained and available for both agriculture and living, many of the Dutch workers who had helped reclaim the land decided to settle there permanently. A Dutch colony developed on Canvey Island within a few years. Dutch even remained the official language in Canvey until about 1700.
The Dutch settlers named all kinds of roads in their settlement after places in their homeland. There is an Aalten Avenue, Zelham Drive, Goirle Avenue, Haarlem Road, Urmond Road and Waalwyk Drive, among others.
As yet, no tangible connection has been found between this history and specific Oud-Aalten residents who would have been involved. Hopefully, relevant information about this will one day ‘surface’!
