History
Since the beginning of our era, the old course of the Rhine between Utrecht and Harmelen became increasingly more difficult to navigate. The building of a dam in the Kromme Rijn in 1122 led to a silting up of the old Rhine below Utrecht, especially as it meandered through very flat terrain.
Already in the early Middle Ages (ca. 700) a canal from Utrecht to Vleuten was dug. When the part Vleuten-Harmelen ultimately became too narrow and winding as well, in 1381 the Oude Rijn (Old Rhine) canal (Harmelen-Utrecht) was dug.
Under the expansion plans of the Utrecht city mayor Hendrick Moreelse in 1662-1665 a new shortcut was dug, the Leidse Rijn, connecting to where the Oude Rijn canal made a curve to the northeast. At the place where the new canal connected to the Oude Rijn the nobleman Everard Meyster built an estate called Oog in Al.
Eventually the name Leidse Rijn came to be used for the whole section Utrecht-Harmelen.
|
Read more about this topic: Leidse Rijn
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
“We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)