Maasbree (NL): ‘Calvinistic’ Graveyard

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A friend told me about a quite curious graveyard hidden in our local woodlands (actually not too far from our local death boulevard: the natural burial ground, the general cemetery & crematorium). Just passed the Doodeindeweg [Dead-end-road] in Hout-Blerick you will find an open space, surrounded by a low hedge, with a wooden cross in the centre. It marks what was commonly called the ‘Calvinistic graveyard’ by the predominantly Catholic population. With this they referred to a all that were non-Catholic.
The cemetery was officialy founded in 1880 by the municipality of Maasbree (which then included Blerick and Baarlo as well) but was already used for centuries for the burial of suicides and unidentified bodies.
It is known that the left and right of the path a number of unbaptized children and an unknown drowning victim were buried. At the end of WWII there were some fallen German soldiers buried there – who were later transferred to Ysselsteyn. From the 1950s the cemetery became neglected and overgrown. Now, under the management of Limburgs Landschap, the place is made accessible again.

Update: As we don’t have snow that often, I went back to the site when it actually did snow… It did add to the already sinistere atmosphere of the place – February 11th 2017.


 

 

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