Dike to Krabbendam
Around 1300, the chronicler Melis Stoke called Nuwendoorn castle "die beste die in alden lande staet. Count Floris V built this coercive castle in the years after 1280 to put the West Frisians under his thumb. The remains of the castle were rediscovered in 1948. In 2009-2011, the province had the foundations bricked up. The watchtower stands on the site of the old keep and has the same dimensions as this main tower, 11 by 11 meters and 25 meters high.
Nuwendoorn was part of a series of coercive castles along the Omringdijk. During a major revolt after the death of Floris V in 1296, the West Frisians destroyed the castle. However, it was rebuilt. By 1370, Nuwendoorn was finished and then disappears from history.
On the other side of the dike we see the Zijpe. This tightly parcelled polder was originally a no man's land of mud flats and salt marshes.
The Zijpe was in open connection with the Zuiderzee until the end of the sixteenth century. During northwesterly storms, the Omringdijk here received the full brunt of it. The winding course of the dike is a silent witness to the battle of attrition.
The dike breached several times due to storm surge in the Zijpe. The water that swirled in during a breach washed out holes that were sometimes too deep to fill. In that case, there was no other option but to build a new piece of dike around the hole. Between Krabbendam and Kolhorn there are several twists and turns to find such a deep lake. They are all places where the dike breached long ago.
Artist Jan van Scorel obtained permission in 1551 to make the Zijpe into land. But in November 1554, storms punched holes in the fresh dikes. A second attempt was made in 1556/57. Unfortunately, the Zijpe flooded again during the All Saints Flood of 1570. Due to the outbreak of the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648), nothing came of repairing the damage. It was not until 1597 that the Zijpe was finally reclaimed. This Map shows the polder around 1570. The arrow indicates the Omringdijk.
The village of Eenigenburg is built on a series of mounds. It is mentioned as early as 1289. The present church dates from 1792. This print shows the village from the southwest in the year 1729. Due to a major land consolidation, the landscape around the village has changed greatly.
In the years 1820-1824 the Groot Noordhollandsch Kanaal was dug straight through the Zijpe (blue on the Map). This runs from Amsterdam to Den Helder. The canal was needed because the Zuiderzee was not deep enough for the ever larger seagoing ships. Amsterdam's harbor was in danger of becoming inaccessible. The importance of the North Holland Canal declined sharply after 1876. That year the North Sea Canal was opened closer to Amsterdam.