Het Groene Kerkje

A must-see in West-Friesland: Het Groene Kerkje in Lambertschaag. From September through April, this atmospheric little church offers high-level coffee concerts every second Sunday morning of the month. Het Groene Kerkje (The Green Little Church), originally devoted to St. Lambertus, is located on a small raised cemetery on the west-side of the road that is home to the North-Holland village of Lambertschaag. The building owes its current name to the fact that its tower was painted green. The oldest resources bearing witness to the church’s existence are the church lists of Utrecht Diocese from 1395. The church building as we know it today was most likely built in the second half of the fifteenth century. The only marking we can use for orientation is located on the bell, which was cast in 1495. When the Reformed Community took over the church, the interior was adapted to the service. The lengthwise setup of the furniture was changed to a widthwise setup, with the pulpit placed against the centre of the southern wall while the organ is located on the original apse. The gorgeous Van Dam organ was built in 1866 and boasts 13 registers. The pulpit was built in 1633. The church boasts three large boards with The Lord’s Prayer, the Articles of Faith and the Ten Commandments. In addition, there’s a twelve-arm copper crown with three small shields from the 17th century. Following years of vacancy, a number of Lambertschaag locals took it upon themselves to protect the building from further decay by wind and water proofing it. In 1974 the “Stichting Het Groene Kerkje” (The Green Little Church Foundation) was founded. It bought the building for Fl. 1.00 from the Nederlandse Monumenten Stichting (Dutch Monument Foundation). Restorations took four years, from 1978 to 1982. Since that time it is being used for small meetings, writers’ gatherings and expositions. But Het Groene Kerkje is known mostly for the concerts it has been hosting every second Sunday afternoon of the month.