(photograph © Kiwidutch)
These photos are from my archive stash and were taken when my cousin and his family visited The Netherlands a few years ago.
We have been on a boat and are about to leave our tour of central Utrecht, but all during the trip I have been taking photos of stone markers that stand under lampposts next to bridges.
We were told that these are “signposts” in stone that would have directed the often illiterate boatmen to the correct area of the city where their goods, services or merchandise were destined to be delivered…
…little figures of tailors for the cloth-makers and tailoring sector, people putting items into the oven for the bakers section of town, (what is the person doing on the other side of the baker though? Could they be stamping up and down in some way to drive air into the oven and make it hot? …or some other sort of task?
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
One stone set of figures shows a man with his hand on the breast of a woman. No prizes for guessing this must be or have been, the red light district.
Some of the pictures depict less obvious trades, so I edited the photos to get a bigger image of the stonework and if you’d like to hazard a guess to the occupation or event that took place here then feel free to drop your ideas into the comment box.
I took a map of the Utrecht city center and tried to figure out of any of the nearby street names could provide any interesting clues.
The clearly translatable ones are : ”zuilenstraat” = column street, “haverstraat“= oat street, “zadelstraat” = saddle street, “lijnmarkt“= line market (probably rope), “ boterstraat” = butter street, ” ganzenmarkt“= goose market, “lauwersteeg” = laurel street, ”hamsteeg“= ham alley and ”varkenmarkt” = pig market.
Other interesting street names around the Gracht are: “zakkendragersteeg” = porter alley (the word “zakkendrager” translates very literally as sack carrier and is especially associated with big bags being unloaded from ship onto wharves, so maybe ‘stevedore” would be better than just ‘porter’?), “Jacobijenstraat” = Jacobean street, ”waterstraat“= waterstreet and ”Jodenrijtje“= Jewish row, ”steenweg“= paved road, ” korte snee straat” = short cut road.
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
Rather than depicting witches, I think the next one is for broom makers…
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
A horse and cart, depicting …? (the green plant is a co-incidental addition as it appears from a close up look on the larger photo that some opportunist plants have sprouted up in some damp/ cracked sections of the wall…)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
Any ideas about what the next one depicts would be most welcome…
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
Poultry market…
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
The pig market… … or Ham Street…
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
This one is a mystery… looks to me like someone tipping water out of a wooden bucket… but is that an infant falling out of it? The phrase “don’t tip the baby out with the bathwater” springs to mind… but why would you need a signpost for this? … and what else could it be?
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
The cattle market…
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
A moon and a sun…
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
This one is perfectly clear… good beer can be found close to here…!
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
