In March 2020 I visited the Belgian locations of this transnational tentative WHS nominated by Belgium and the Netherlands. From a visual point of view, what I experienced was a similar landscape of Beemster or the Par Force hunting landscape with a hint of the Belgian béguinages. The central focus of this tentative nomination is not religious though, it's agriculture.

Around 1818-1825, when Belgium and the Netherlands formed the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, Johannes van den Bosch put forward the idea of fighting poverty with agriculture which gave way to the construction of 7 agricultural colonies. There were so many paupers or vagrants at the beginning of the 19th century, that their size was that of sizeable hamlets or villages with their own chapel or church, pond, cemetery, housing and even their own mint.

The Merksplas colony, the last pauper colony built in 1825, was the only farm in the region to have more than 100 hectares of farm land. It also had a very large pigsty for as much as 95 pigs, which has recently been converted into a free informative visitor centre (top left photo). The various videos in Flemish with English subtitles were fundamental to help give context to the information I read in the nomination dossier. I parked my car for free at the parking lot near the huge church which has been converted in a prison museum. From Merksplas, I headed to my next destination, the Wortel colony built in 1822. On the way through tree lined avenues, I stopped by the Merksplas colony cemetery with several nameless white crosses.

After visiting the Merksplas cemetery, driving towards Wortel, keep your eyes peeled for a small brown sign pointing towards the Wortel colony which on my GPS seemed to be closer to Staakheuvel than modern Wortel. On the way to the colony, there are another four entrance signs (Ingang 1-4) and a white painted building with a green statue surrounded by a tall see-through black fence. I followed a car heading towards a small parking lot and followed an old chap inside what I thought was the Wortel colony visitor centre. When I was asked to hand over my personal belongings, to my surprise I found out that in fact I was visiting a fully functioning prisoners' facility! So I quickly headed back out, drove away from the parking lot and drove further on to another much bigger parking lot with a rusty metal sign of the Wortel colony like the one in Merksplas.

After a stroll around what is now the Casino Feast Hall (bottom right photo), I walked in the 'Klapekster' Nature point, which is a series of colony farmhouses, each with plots of farm land which once made up the free agricultural colony of Wortel. Poor families lived in these separate farmhouses which now house different farm animals. The most unique of these farm animals were the Konik or Polish primitive horses which I never saw before. Next I explored part of the mountain bike routes on foot. With the Natuurpunt behind me, I walked straight ahead and then turned on the left towards the Wortel colony cemetery (bottom left photo), which is similar to the one of the Merksplas colony. The only difference is that it has a brick gate and the white crosses have black wooden name tags on them.

The other 5 colonies in the Netherlands, are the ones in Fredriksoord and Willemsoord, the first ones founded in 1818-1820, Ommerschans (1819), Wilhelminaoord (1821-23) and Veenhuizen (1823). This tentative WHS which is up for inscription this year, is meant to celebrate 200 years of colony life, from when they were founded in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815, to their use as colonies of benevolence in 1870 after the Belgian Independence in 1830 and after being sold in public auctions in 1846-1865, to the abolition of the law on vagrancy as late as in 1993, to the renovation projects after a protest in 2006 which have paved the way to the sites' nomination. Even though the OUV is not that tangible as very little remains inside the buildings, the layout and size of at least the Belgian agricultural pauper colonies is certainly impressive. That said, I'd be very surprised if this transnational nomination doesn't make it on the WH list.