Interesting Facts

The Dom Tower in Utrecht is the highest and oldest church tower in Holland.

It was built between 1321 and 1342, it took so long to build due to a lack of money.

Dom Tower reaches a height of 112 meters and inside the Tower are fourteen bells that weigh between 880 and 18,000 pounds.

Halfway up the Dom Tower there are fourteen bells. Six were founded by Geert van Wou in 1505 and can still be heard today.

Some of the larger bells are named after saints and religious figures.

The Dom Tower was originally designed as a steeple which was attached to St Martin’s cathedral.

After what is believed to be a tornado in 1674 ripped through the city of Utrecht, the nave of the church was knocked down and remained that way for some time as the people of Utrecht did not have the money to rebuild the cathedral.

The Dom Tower was largely unharmed by the storm still remains free standing today and a beautiful paved area between the cathedral and tower exists which is known as Dom Square.

The Dom Tower is open to the public and if you are willing to climb the 465 spiral stairway to the roof, you will be provided with excellent views of Utrecht and it’s surrounding area, on a clear day you can see Amsterdam.

In the Netherlands, the tower is called the “Dom Toren”.

In Medieval England, September was always known as the Harvest month, and as the many farmers would gather in the last of their crops, trying to prove that they had reaped the best crops they would try and beat their neighbouring farmers to complete the work first.

There was a fun ceremony known as “Calling the Mare” and this involved quickly gathering the last sheaf of the harvest and shaping it into a mare shape, then delivering it to the neighbouring farmers land, shouting “Mare, Mare”.

This was supposed to signify that wild horses would come and eat their harvest if they didn’t gather it in quickly.

Once the receiving farmer had finished gathering his crop, he would pass it onto the next farmer who had not finished until it reached the last farmer.

This last farmer would then have to keep the “Mare” on display for a year to show that he was the slowest farmer.

Similarly, corn dolls were also weaved into shapes and placed in the corn fields as farmers believed that these corn dolls were the spirit of the corn goddess.

It was believed that if you did not place a corn doll in your fields the corn goddess would die and so would your crops.

So now you know what the term “Calling the Mare” means and that it comes from an old farming tradition.