Deurne

Deurne may refer to:

Deurne, Belgium

Deurne ([ˈdøːrnə]) is the second largest district of the municipality of Antwerp, Belgium, (right after the Antwerp town district) and has 69,408 inhabitants.

Deurne is best known for its green environment with the biggest park in Antwerp Rivierenhof.

History

Ancien régime

During the Ancien régime Deurne was nothing more than part of the Eastern hinterland of Antwerp. Like many dwellings it settled on the crossroads of a river (the Schijn) and a connection route (the 'Turnhoutse baan': the road from Antwerp to Turnhout). There are indications that Deurne existed in prehistoric and Roman times but the first tangible proof of Deurne only dates back to 1185.

Deurne consisted mainly of sparsely populated farmland. However, as a direct result of the increasing wealth of the Antwerp population, many aristocratic estates were erected (the so-called "Hof van Plaisantie" was a specific rural estate, a bourgeois version of a château or country house). Typically, merchants, diplomats, wealthy artists (like Peter Paul Rubens f.i.) would escape to their Hof van Plaisantie. Some country houses in Deurne were : Sterckxhof, Papenhof, Lakbors, Bisschoppenhof, Gallifort, Inkborsch, Bosuil, Ertbrugge & Venneborg. Although most country houses were destroyed over the centuries (especially in 1542), some like Sterckxhof or Bisschoppenhof survived. Further surviving evidence of this aristocratic history of Deurne is the St Fredegand Church and the adjacent cemetery (the St-Fredegandusbegraafpark).

Deurne, Netherlands

Deurne [ˈdøːrnə] is a rural municipality and eponymous village in the province of North Brabant in the Netherlands. Including the villages of Liessel, Vlierden, Neerkant, and Helenaveen, Deurne had a population of 31,711 in 2014 and cover an area of 118.36 km² (45.70 sq mi).

History

First recorded as Durninum (near / by thorns) in a deed of gift from the Frankish Lord Herelaef to bishop Willibrord in 721, Deurne remained a collection of subsistence farming hamlets west of the Peel peat moor until the 2nd half of the 19th century, when a newly built railroad (Eindhoven - Venlo in 1866) and a canal (Zuid-Willemsvaart canal in 1826) enabled the commercial exploitation of the moor. Although the peat industry did not yield much of a profit in the era of coal powered industries, the cultivation of the newly cleared land, in the 1930s also by forced labour, gave a boost to agriculture, farming, and settlement alike. Today only tiny pieces of this former peat moor remain, some reflooded as mini wetlands, scattered along the fault line that once brought about its very existence.