The English captain's chapel

The Gasthuis chapel (guesthouse chapel) of Den Oever is said to have been a gift from an English captain. He was shipwrecked off the coast, was rescued by people from Wieringen and, out of gratitude, paid for a chapel with a guesthouse.

The building is said to have been a warehouse of the Dutch East India Company first, and in the seventeenth century the Reformed congregation used it as a church. The lightermen wrote that for more than two centuries the chapel had served not only for worship, but also as a meeting place. A model ship hung in the chapel, according to tradition in memory of a shipwreck. Another source mentions a ship full of sugar that ran aground on Wieringen. The rescue of stranded ships was also organised from the chapel.

How the pulpit of 1670 and the choir screen got in has remained a riddle. One story says they first stood in the Heidense Kapel of Stroe. In 1955 and 1956 the chapel wardens dissolved their foundation and placed the chapel with the Reformed church of Oosterland. The chapel itself has stood in the Zuiderzeemuseum in Enkhuizen since the sixties.