How did the roads full of boulders come about?

Just as the large hunebed stones ended up in Drenthe with the snow and ice from Scandinavia, the non-dolmen stones also ended up here. The fields were full of the smaller boulders. They were collected and tapped to size by those boulders. Then, just like today, they were laid in the street by pavers. Neat with the flattest side up.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the making of boulder roads came to an end, because the work of the boulders was seen as degrading. There was increasing resistance to that. In the early twentieth century, boulder beaters were still used to provide work.

Why did they ever choose those boulders? That is twofold, because they were in the way in the fields and it was also the only hard building material available. As a result, there was also a living to earn.

Around 1730 the most money could be made from the boulders. Around that year, shipworm broke out in the pole dike on the Zuiderzee. The dike started to look like a kind of Swiss cheese through which the water could pass. That had to be propped up and the boulders came into consideration for that. A completely new dike was also built with the boulders.

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