History lesson
For more clarity, we turn to chairman Gerhard Vedder of the Historical Circle Erica. For him it is not a question whether the Bergerschans was built, he knows for sure, but first gives a short history lesson.
Back to the 16th and 17th centuries, to the Eighty Years’ War. “It broke out in 1568. Drenthe did not yet exist as a province and, together with Groningen, was part of the Hof van Friesland. The marshes in the east and south of Drenthe had been drained for the cultivation of buckwheat, which meant that a natural line of defense disappeared. ordered to keep the marshes wet and to build dikes. Not much later the defense was reinforced with redoubts and so-called redouts, the somewhat simpler redoubts. This created a ribbon of defenses along the Bourtanger marsh.”
Never found
But Vedder is also unable to accurately indicate the location to the centimetre, because nothing has ever been found of the redoubt. “So part of that line of defense is the Bergerschans, built on the foothills of the Hondsrug, where Erica was founded in 1863. Nowadays, a residential area can be found at that location.”
We received a photo of that residential area from Mr Reuvers from Erica. It must go around that road, that’s where the redoubt must have once stood.
The article continues below the photo: