Qualla: Oude Pekela

Oude Pekela: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Willemjans, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1599, a syndicate called the Frisian Company bought a stretch of swamp along the Pekel A river and cut it into 101 lots. The plan was to dig out the peat, dry it, and sell it to the cities of Holland and Friesland that needed cheap fuel. To do the digging they founded a settlement and named it after the river. Four centuries later, Oude Pekela - Old Pekela in the Groningen dialect - has outlived the peat, the cardboard mills, the boats, and most of the certainties that built it. The town is still here, narrow as the original canal, lined with the houses of the people who worked the strange industries that came and went.

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Image: Willemjans | CC BY-SA 3.0

Oude Pekela: How to Mine a Bog

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hardscarf, CC BY-SA 4.0. The veenkolonien - peat colonies - were a specifically Dutch invention. You found a peat bog. You dug a long canal into it. You parceled the land in narrow strips perpendicular to the canal, so every farm had water frontage to ship its product out. You drained, cut, dried, and st...

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Image: Hardscarf | CC BY-SA 4.0

Oude Pekela: From Bog to Baltic

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ralf Roletschek, CC BY-SA 3.0. When the peat ran out around 1800, the men of Oude Pekela took to the sea. The Pekel A connected through to the Dollart and out to the Wadden Sea. The first lock had been built in 1717. Local skippers, used to short canal runs, started sailing further - first to Holland's ports, ...

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Image: Ralf Roletschek | CC BY-SA 3.0

Oude Pekela: Cardboard and Starch

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J.P. (Hans) Terlouw, CC BY 3.0. It found cardboard. And potato starch. The post-peat soil grew an excellent industrial potato, and the Groningen farmers' cooperatives developed a starch industry that turned the tubers into adhesive, sizing, and eventually thousands of other derivatives. Oude Pekela's mills prod...

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Image: J.P. (Hans) Terlouw | CC BY 3.0

Oude Pekela: The Jewish Community

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sebes Z., CC BY-SA 4.0. Jews first settled in Oude Pekela in 1685, drawn by the same opportunity that drew everyone: a new town, no guilds, work for anyone willing. They were joined in the late 1700s by families from East Frisia and Poland. The first synagogue went up in 1791; a larger one replaced it i...

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Image: Sebes Z. | CC BY-SA 4.0

Oude Pekela: The Clown

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wutsje, CC BY-SA 3.0. In June 1987, Oude Pekela appeared in newspapers across the Netherlands for an entirely different reason. Parents reported that a clown had been sexually abusing children. The story grew. More parents came forward. Hundreds. There were demonstrations. A police spokesperson used t...

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Image: Wutsje | CC BY-SA 3.0

Oude Pekela: What Remains

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gerardus, CC0. Oude Pekela today is poor. Elsevier Weekblad in 2009 and 2010 called it the worst place in the Netherlands to live, a verdict its residents loudly rejected. House prices in 2021 were the most affordable in the country - which can be read either way. The town centre was renovated ...

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Image: Gerardus | CC0