15. The White Church

The White Church is a reformed church located on a raised fenced-in cemetery on the main thoroughfare of the village of Hemrik. Old writings indicate that a chapel stood at this location as early as 1315. In 1739 the present church was built on the foundations of a medieval church dedicated to St. Andrew. Presumably the wall work of the old church was used in its construction. The White Church is a three-sided closed hall church with round arched windows. It is a single nave church building. The white plaster is probably nineteenth-century. The weather vane is in the shape of a horse. Above the entrance is visible a masonry gable stone with the inscription House of God and the name Lyclama. Next to the entrance, a gable stone is visible in memory of the 1945 fallen pilot Arnaud de Saxcé, whose plane crashed near the White Church. The building is a national monument. 

The floor of the hall consists of antique tiles. The interior includes a seventeenth-century pulpit chair. The organ was built in 1940 by Bakker and Timmenga (Leeuwarden), using older parts made in 1839 by the Zwolle organ maker J.C. Scheur. The organ must be played by two people. The organ was restored in 2002. 

A cemetery surrounds the church and there is a hipped-roofed belfry from 1739. The bell was cast in 1495 by the traveling bell-founder Geert van Wou. The bell weighs as much as 560 kg. and has a diameter of almost 100 cm. Next to the cemetery is the family cemetery of the Van der Sluis family and an associated crypt built in 1860 at the initiative of Jan Alles van 

der Sluis. There are 36 people in the crypt. Next to the crypt is a plaque with the family tree engraved in it. Subsequent family members are buried around the vault. 

When the Reformed congregations of Lippenhuizen and Hemrik merged, the new congregation decided to dispose of the church building. The village dedicated itself to the preservation of the church building and therefore founded Stichting Behoud Witte Kerk Hemrik, which bought the church building in 2000 for the symbolic amount of one guilder. 

From April 2001 to October 2002, both interior and exterior were thoroughly restored. In the process, the building was given back its original color scheme. 

Since its restoration in 2002, The White Church has served as a cultural meeting place. Weekly concerts and performances take place from September to April. A variety of cultural activities are organized, including lectures, concerts, theater and a philosophical-literary café. An eight-week art event is held in the fall: ART Super. The building can also be rented by choirs and other musical groups for repe-tities and performances. In addition, it is an official wedding location and is suitable for (family) celebrations, meetings and courses. Church services, mourning ceremonies and reflection meetings are also still held there. Since 2021, it is also possible to stay overnight in the church through Holy Nights Foundation.