Hervormde Kerk Elspeet

The Nederlands Hervormde Kerk on the Nunspeterweg is the oldest building in Elspeet and the fixed point around which the village grew. It began as a late-Gothic Catholic village church dedicated to Saint Paul, and passed to the Reformed congregation after the Reformation. It is listed as a national monument (rijksmonument).

The oldest part is the choir, built in the fifteenth century. It has a three-sided east end, whitewashed walls and slender pointed windows, and on the ridge of its roof sits a wrought-iron cross dated 1727. The nave behind it is much younger. In 1840 the church was extended on the south side, raising its capacity from about 100 to about 220 people. A second enlargement followed in the 1920s: a building permit for a gallery and new porches was requested in 1921, and on 14 March 1923 the work of rebuilding and enlarging the church was put out to tender, with the architect D. Kok Jzn. involved. This added an extension to the north. The most recent renovation took place in 1990 and 1991.

The tower has its own story. The original tower, which appears on an early eighteenth-century drawing by Cornelis Pronk, collapsed in 1790. It was rebuilt the following year for 10,354 guilders, a sober brick tower with plain recessed panels and a slate-covered spire. The three bells survived the collapse and were hung again in the new tower: one cast by Henricus Meurs in 1612 and two by François Hemony in 1659. Hemony was the best-known bell founder of the Dutch Golden Age, and his bells are prized for their tone. Inside, the church keeps an oak pulpit from the first half of the seventeenth century.

Elspeet is a strongly churchgoing village on the northern Veluwe, and the building is still used for worship by its congregation, so it is not run as a museum. Most visitors see it from the outside, where the contrast between the white medieval choir and the plain brick of the later nave and tower shows the church's long building history at a glance.

The church stands in the centre of the village, a short walk from Molen De Hoop, the village windmill. It suits visitors interested in rural church architecture and in the slow growth of a Veluwe farming village, and it makes a natural first stop before heading out to the Elspeetsche Heide north of the village.