Nieuwveen (village centre)

The first inhabitants settle in the area around Nieuwveen. They begin draining the peat soil and bringing it into cultivation, so that it slowly becomes fit for arable farming and cattle.

A settlement takes shape here that will later be called Nieuwveen.
The name shifted considerably over the centuries: first Nuenvene, then Nijeveen and Niuweveen, in the seventeenth century Nieuveen, after that Nieuweveen, and from 1795 Nieuwveen.

The ground holds a layer of fen peat, laagveen. Digging it away gets under way.

The oldest house still standing in Nieuwveen dates from this year, according to the Kadaster, the Dutch land registry.

The water of the peat lakes swallows the neighbouring village of Schoot and the Uiterbuurt. Nieuwveen escapes by a hair.

Nieuwveen is no longer governed directly. The Counts of Holland did so first, then — until 1724 — the States of Holland.

For f 15,500,– the heerlijkheid of Nieuwveen — a manorial lordship, carrying rights of jurisdiction and appointment — passes from the States of Holland to the City of Haarlem.

Gerrit Willem van der Laan, lord of the manor, transfers the neighbouring ambachtsheerlijkheid of De Uiterbuurt to the City of Haarlem. From this comes the name Nieuwveen met den Uiterbuurt.

The peat lakes keep growing and there is less and less to be earned in the village. Nieuwveen falls into crisis and many peat workers are left without work. By the end of the eighteenth century barely more than 500 people live there.

Draining of the peat lakes around Nieuwveen begins. Seven windmills set to work pumping the water out into the Amstel.

The Nieuwkoop and Zevenhoven droogmakerij – the drained lake-bed polder – becomes a fact. The drainage was a state undertaking.

The drainage is completed.
The Zevenhoven polder is drained by eight vijzelmolens, Archimedes-screw mills, set up in four "gangs" of two mills each, lifting the water in two stages. The original document speaks of seven mills; the difference probably lies in what exactly was counted as Nieuwveen.
The polder lies deep – the water level is 5.90 metres below NAP, the Dutch ordnance datum – and suffers badly from seepage, which makes daily pumping necessary and keeps it so.

The land won by the draining is parcelled out. For the village it is a fresh start.

The first farms go up in the drained polders. With the work the village grows too: more inhabitants, more houses.

Nieuwveen too has a cholera epidemic to endure. Eighty people die of it, a tenth of the population.

The village gets its first public street lighting: paraffin lanterns. A stubborn fight in the gemeenteraad, the municipal council, came first, and among the population too those for and against were sharply opposed.

Opposite the present Raadhuis (town hall) on the A.H. Kooistrastraat, the foundation stone goes down for the small church of the Evangelisation Society.

The wind-driven drainage mills disappear one by one; steam pumping stations elsewhere take over their work.
Not all the mills go this early: the lower mill H of the Zevenhoven polder on the Ringdijk, built in 1810, stands until 1926.

The Nieuwkoop steam pumping station is built at Korteraar to a design by W.C. and K. de Wit, fitted with two British Gwynnes centrifugal pumps. It takes over the drainage of the droogmakerij.

For the first time a bicycle with pneumatic tyres is sold to someone in Nieuwveen. The buyer was the municipal clerk W. van der Vos; the supplier, the firm Stichter.

Less and less butter and cheese is made on the farms themselves. Mixed holdings appear, with arable farming alongside cattle.

The farmers of Nieuwveen begin using artificial fertiliser.

Motorcycles, cars and lorries make their appearance in Nieuwveen too.

The pumping station at Korteraar is converted from steam.

Electricity reaches Nieuwveen for the first time. Candles and paraffin lamps disappear; electric motors make their entrance.

The paraffin lanterns of 1867 give way to electric street lighting.

A single fire pump with a petrol engine replaces the two hand pumps. It shifts 900 litres of water a minute.

A daily bus service to Alphen aan den Rijn and Leiden begins, set up by P. Langhout of Ter Aar.

G. Koppenol of Nieuwveen starts the first daily bus service to Amsterdam. On Fridays a service runs to Leiden, for those visiting the cattle market there.

The office of mayor, shared from of old with Zevenhoven, is split. Nieuwveen gets J.W. Geesink; Zevenhoven, W.J. Boxce.

The first typewriter appears at the municipal office, an Underwood.

Drinking water now comes from the mains, supplied by De Elf Gemeenten at Woerden. Rainwater and ditch water fall out of use.

The office of mayor of Nieuwveen is merged with that of Rijnsaterwoude and Leimuiden. Mayor J.A. Bakhuizen, successor to J.W. Geesink, lives at Leimuiden and stays there. The arrangement did not go down well in Nieuwveen.

The Raadhuis (town hall) on the A.H. Kooistrastraat is officially opened.

Unlike in the First World War of 1914–1918, Nieuwveen too has a hard time of it. In the winter of 1944–1945 food was very scarce: money got you little, bartering got you further.
Roovers closes with the remark that Nieuwveen was spared any fighting. In military terms that is correct, but the village did indeed lose inhabitants to the occupation.

Henk Kooistra is killed as well. Kooistra and Speelman were friends from Nieuwveen who both studied in Amsterdam, became involved in the resistance there early on, and were active in the clandestine distribution of pamphlets and of the newspapers "Vrij Nederland" and "Trouw".
Streets in the village were named after both of them after the war; Nieuwveen has a war memorial bearing their names.

The municipality adopts its very first expansion plan.

Mechanisation on the farms of Nieuwveen carries on. Farm work appeals to workers less and less; many take jobs elsewhere, in the rising industries and in house building.

Willem Pieter Speelman is executed by firing squad at Halfweg, together with nine others, in reprisal for a resistance attack on the Amsterdam–Haarlem railway line. He was 26.
Speelman (Sellingen, 20 January 1919) was a son of the gereformeerde minister of Nieuwveen and read economics at the Vrije Universiteit. Shortly after the German invasion he began writing pamphlets calling for resistance. He was arrested at the end of 1942 but escaped using a hacksaw blade hidden in the sole of his shoe. Early in 1943 he was a co-founder of the underground newspaper Trouw, and became the linchpin of its distribution network. On 29 January 1945 he was arrested again in a raid on the S.J.P. Bakker printing works in Amsterdam; under interrogation he gave nothing away.
He was reburied at the Eerebegraafplaats Bloemendaal, the Field of Honour, and posthumously received the Resistance Cross 1940–1945. His parents were imprisoned several times during the occupation to make them reveal their son's whereabouts, and lived for a time in Noordwijk to escape the occupier's attention.

The gemeenteraad adopts a bye-law giving every street and road in Nieuwveen an official name — for the first time ever.
On that occasion the names of the two men of the resistance who were killed are fixed: the Stationsweg becomes the W.P. Speelmanweg and part of the Oude Nieuwveenseweg becomes the A.H. Kooistrastraat. That explains the street names Roovers uses throughout without explanation.

The Rijkstelefoon, the state telephone service, is automated in Nieuwveen under the dialling code 01723.
The first sub-post office had already opened in 1851, at the house of mayor S. van Driel on what is now the A.H. Kooistrastraat, beside the Raadhuis, in a room that served as the municipal office. He was the first kantoorhouder, office-keeper, though the title at the time was still brievengaarder, letter-gatherer.

Nieuwveen reaches 3000 inhabitants. That includes the residents of the Johannes Stichting and Huize St. Ursula: together some 800 people, patients and nursing staff. Both institutions had grown strongly in those years and become known nationally.

The small church of the Evangelisation Society, dating from 1870, is demolished. In its place comes the Netherlands Reformed meeting hall 't Anker.

The gemeenteraad of Nieuwveen, seven members strong from of old, goes to eleven now that the village numbers 3000 inhabitants.

Nieuwveen is connected to the national mains gas network. The coal stoves used from of old, and the oil stoves burning domestic heating oil that had come into use alongside them, are cleared out in great numbers; bottled gas (Butagas) for heating goes out of date.
On the Jaagpad along the Amstel, mains gas is not yet available.

Roovers' series stops here. Everything after this comes from other sources.

Nieuwveen numbers 3,224 inhabitants over an area of 863 hectares.
That is 224 more than the 3,000 of 1969, but the village itself grew by more than that difference suggests: the 1969 figure still counted the roughly 800 patients and nursing staff of the two institutions, and the Johannes Stichting left Nieuwveen in 1974.

In a local government reorganisation the north-eastern part of the Zevenhoven polder, called "Blokland", is added to the municipality of Nieuwveen. This area previously belonged to the municipality of Mijdrecht in the province of Utrecht.
The population rises as a result to 3,597. The municipality now consists of the settlements of Nieuwveen, Blokland and part of Vrouwenakker.

The municipality of Zevenhoven is merged with the municipality of Nieuwveen. The new municipality bears the name Nieuwveen for the time being.
That is the end of the independent existence of the neighbouring municipality with which Nieuwveen even shared a mayor until 1927.

The municipality is renamed LIEMEER. After centuries the name Nieuwveen disappears from the map as the name of a municipality; the village of course remains.
The municipality of Liemeer comprises Nieuwveen, Zevenhoven, Noorden and Vrouwenakker.

The Protestant primary school in Nieuwveen closes its doors for want of pupils.

The town of Nieuwveen numbers 4,559 inhabitants, against 3,742 in 2013 – a growth of 22 per cent in thirteen years. There are 1,641 dwellings, about three quarters of them owner-occupied.
The historic core of the village is a protected conservation area.