Klooster, kloosteronderdl, Grotestraat 71 a

English translation

The text above is the record as published by the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, in Dutch. The English below is a machine translation made by TreeAlive, not by the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed; it has not been checked by a person. Where the two differ, the original is the record. Report a translation error: privacy@treealive.com

Description

Introduction

On the eastern side of the garden, along the Grotestraat, stands the former CONVENT FARM, called the Sint-Jozefhuis and dating from 1925. The building was probably constructed under the architecture of J. Kayser (Venlo). The property, including among other things a front house, cold cellar, bakery, stable, farmhands' dwelling, manure pit (later beet cellar), shoemaking workshop, potato cellar and hay loft, was used by the sisters until 1960.

Description

The single-storey building has an elongated rectangular ground plan, with a recessed corner on the northwestern side (facing the convent). The farmhouse is covered with an asymmetrical gabled roof with pantiles. On the northwestern side the brick facade is one-and-a-half storeys high. Here a cement image of Saint Joseph has been placed in the facade. On the cemented field beneath the image stood the text: "Sint-Jozefhuis". The western facade has attached doors with diamond-shaped fanlights and sash windows with small glazing bars and artificial stone lintels. Important is the ground plan: from the front house with washplace and bakery a long corridor runs to the southern part of the building. This corridor, which was separated from the service rooms intended for the farmhands, was exclusively intended for use by the sisters. From north to south one finds in the building: the bakery, fitted with a deep bread oven with wrought-iron shutters; the front house in which a pump with tap and granite counter, a smoking room with fireplace, milk pails and a cold cellar with barrel vault; the shoemaking workshop (with remains of the original equipment, including a last); the underlying potato cellar, the cattle stall with a steel standard profile beam layer and a hay chute connected to the overlying large hay loft; the manure pit with sunken earthen floor, and a manure scoop. On the side of the Grotestraat the facade of the farmhouse is completely closed. Several high-placed rectangular lights of the sisters' corridor have meanwhile been blocked up. Also the later broken-through door, flanked on both sides by a window, of the farmhands' dwelling has been blocked again.

Valuation

The convent farm is of general importance. The building has cultural-historical value as an example of a spiritual development, namely the flourishing of religious orders and congregations in the nineteenth century and is also of importance as an example of the typological development of the contemplative, self-sufficient convent in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It is of architectural-historical importance because of the style and place in the work of the architect Kayser. It has ensemble values because of the coherence of convent, farm and garden. It is also of importance in connection with the development of the church village.