Listen | Cheese Market
Purmerend is a bustling town with a historic centre, situated on the former River De Where and in the middle of three reclaimed major lakes of North Holland: the Purmer Lake, Beemster Lake and Wormermeer.
Purmerend also lay at the junction of ancient trade routes between the trading regions of Amsterdam, Hoorn, Edam and Alkmaar. This strategic location allowed Purmerend to grow into a rich trading town, with beautiful buildings and a lot of economic activity. This was reflected in the town's many markets, where all kinds of goods from the surrounding area were traded from fish to vegetables and cattle. The markets are central to the town's prosperity and form a thread through Purmerend's history.
You are now walking onto the Cheese Market. Over five hundred years ago ...
Purmerend was also located at the junction of ancient trade routes between the trading regions of Amsterdam, Hoorn, Edam and Alkmaar. This strategic location allowed Purmerend to grow into a rich trading town, with beautiful buildings and a lot of economic activity. This was reflected in the town's many markets, where all kinds of goods from the surrounding area were traded from fish to vegetables and cattle. The markets are central to the town's prosperity and form a thread through Purmerend's history.
You are now walking onto the Cheese Market. Purmerend's first weekly market took place here over five hundred years ago. First the weekly market was on Saturdays but from 1572 on Tuesdays. The spot where we are standing now was then called the Marktveld, a more appropriate name. After all, the square was not so big then and not demarcated by houses as it is today. It was an open field at the junction of roads. A place where many buyers and traders passed by. That made it the ideal location for the first Purmerend market.
This market initially traded all kinds of goods-cows, grain, fish and also cheese. But why then the name cheese market? This name was given to the square only later, when over the centuries the various commodities were given their own market, spread across the town. Like the cattle market, the rag market and the fruit market. Only cheese continued to be sold here. Hence, we now know this place as the Cheese Market.
The market's heyday was from 1800 to 1900. Back then, up to four million kilos of cheese were traded here in one year. That amounts to about 4,800 large, round cheeses per market day. That made Purmerend the second largest cheese market in the country after Alkmaar.
As cheeses were increasingly produced and sold at dairies, supplies declined further and further, and the Cheese Market was ended shortly before 1940. But even though this market no longer exists, its success contributed to Purmerend's status as d market town of North Holland.
If you want to see images of the Cheese Market, check the location menu. Continue right after the church and walk towards the Purmerends museum.
