Heijen

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

Description of component 3: The GARDEN LAYOUT and meadows.

The layout consists of the following components: a. drive; b. courtyard and forecourt; c. kitchen garden and orchards; d. meadows.

Ad. a. The drive is asphalted and runs from the Hoofdstraat to the north gate (entrance to the forecourt); on either side a single row of trees, consisting of poplars (estimated planted around 1950); the entrance gate with brick pillars is new and falls outside protection.

Ad. b. The arrangement regarding the planting on the courtyard and forecourt is recent and represents a subordinate importance; from a historical standpoint three old trees on the forecourt are of importance: walnut, yew and sweet chestnut. The courtyard is covered with gravel, the forecourt with grass and gravel.

Ad. c. The kitchen garden lies directly to the east of the courtyard, a small gate in the garden wall forms the connection. The kitchen garden is surrounded by a hawthorn hedge; there are several old fruit trees. There are two orchards: the first directly to the south of the drive, surrounded by a hawthorn hedge; the second adjoins directly to the south of the first. The wooden sheds and bicycle storage in the kitchen garden have no monumental significance.

Ad. d.: In the case of HEIJEN the meadows are very important from a visual-landscape perspective; they carry as it were the entire historical complex, particularly because there are considerable level differences, as a result of fluvial terrace formation over millennia. The meadow directly to the west of the house is actually a low-lying old Meuse arm that was water-bearing until far into the 19th century, called the Meer. The middle of this meadow is the lowest point of the complex and lies approximately four metres lower than the complex part along the Hoofdstraat. The Meer has directly to the south of the house a short arm running in a semicircle: a dry moat over which once lay a bridge that connected the courtyard via the south gate to the terrain part (now meadow) on which the former access road lay. The terrains to the north of the drive and the building complex are likewise grassland. Except along the Hoofdstraat there now stands along the boundaries of the entire complex an irregular, single row of poplars. Dike of the old Meuse arm with hawthorn hedges and poplars to the south and west of the main building. On the west side of the complex runs a property-dividing ditch.

Designation

The GARDEN LAYOUT is of general importance because of:

- its age and the undisturbed location of the HEIJEN complex in the naturally-accidented landscape environment;

- the historic experiential and perception values connected with this environment, structure and buildings as well as the historic-utilitarian relationships;

- the constituent characteristics as property-dividing and property-marking elements (ditch and poplar planting) and structuring components such as lane, court, place and garden that lend the complex a certain historic and structuring cohesion;

- the cultural-historical and landscape significance of the dike of the old Meuse arm with hawthorn hedges and poplars to the south and west of the main building;

- the well-preserved spatial layout of the historical design (which stands in close relationship with the geomorphological structure, namely river dunes in the east, open floodplains in the west).