Een gedetailleerde reconstructie van de zuidoostelijke Marne eind 17de eeuw aan de hand van een kaart van Beckeringh uit 1771

The well-known Groningen mapmaker Theodorus Beckeringh made a very detailed map of some parishes in the southeast of the Marne district in northern Groningen, dated 1771. This map appears to show every house and other building, together with the roads, dikes, canals and other waterways, and quite a few other details. The depicted houses have been compared with other historical source material, which made it clear that the map shows the situation of nearly a century earlier, pre¬sumably 1672/1676 or up to a decade later. The article argues that Beckeringh copied an older map, possibly made to clarify the boundaries of two jurisdictions: 1. Leens, and 2. Wehe, Zuurdijk and Nijenklooster, which had been split around 1650.
Taking into account that the information on the map is from the end of the 17th century – well before any detailed cadastral maps – the article continues with detailed descriptions of the salt-marsh ridges and dwelling mounds (terps), parcelling struc¬ture, roads and waterways shown on the map. Subsequently it discusses the depicted buildings in every parish and argues that between ca 1675 and 1806 the number of houses in the region increased by about a quarter, especially in the villages.
Transferring the information supplied by Beckeringh to a detailed 1830 map, a very exact picture is constructed of the southeast of the Marne district in the last decades of the 17th century. As a joint project of an archeologist and a historian, this article has been written in honour of Egge Knol, who has so brilliantly combined these two disciplines.