Oldehove Church tower Leeuwarden / Netherlands description:Around 1100 there was a small tuffstone church on this spot. During the 13th century, this was in for replacement, and they started building a bigger church... but this never got more than fundaments.....
Later, when in 1435 the towns Oldehove, Nijehove and Hoek were joined together to form the city Leeuwarden, a basilica was built. But Leeuwarden wanted more, a big church with a tower at least as high as the one in Groningen.
On May 28, 1529 Jacob van Aaken got the order to build a new tower and church in Oldehove. The tower had to be 120 metres high.
As usual, Van Aaken started with the fundaments of the tower. However, he was used to build on stronger grounds with rocks, and so building on the Freese clay was a challenging experiment. He made digging a big pitt, in which in intermediate layers chalk and clay layers ware put. Building started on top of this.
It went wrong streight away. The tower started to sink in noth-eastern direction as soon as it reached 10 metres. They still tried to continue streight, giving a bizare C-shape, but quickly the tower was 1,68 meter out of the lead and building had to be stopped at 40 metres. The curch was never built.
The tower was used by fire watch, because it gave a good overview of the city and alerts could be given easily when any fire was detected.
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