Zonnewijzerspad 5

Two families used to live in this worker’s cottage…
Zonnewijzerspad 5 is directly adjacent to the orchard (which counts as Zonnewijzerspad 3). With an almost dollhouse-like appearance, this worker’s cottage from Zaandijk was once home to two families. The bay on the left-hand side accommodated the closet beds, in which people used to sleep in a half-sitting position. They believed that lying completely flat would cause too much blood to flow to their brains, which was thought to be life-threatening. At the rear of the property is an original well that fulfilled an extremely important function in the times before a piped water supply was devised. If you did not have a well, and your rain barrel was empty, then you would have to draw water from the ditch… the same ditch into which the toilets emptied, and in which you could sometimes see excrement floating past. This was not ideal for hygiene! Infectious diseases remained a significant hazard until well into the 20th century. The ditch was also used for laundry, as you can tell from the ‘boenwal’ (‘scrubbing wall’), visible here at the water’s edge. Almost every house in the Zaan region had a ‘boenwal’, which was a section of wooden planking on which buckets and barrels were scrubbed, and the dishes and laundry were done. This also made this area the obvious location for the ‘bleekveldjes’ (‘bleaching fields’) in which laundry was put out to dry and bleach in the sun.

The cottage at Zonnewijzerspad 5 was previously located at Ezelspad 13 in Koog aan de Zaan