The monastery of Vatrop and the passage underground

A monastery is said to have once stood near Vatrop, with an underground passage to the church of Oosterland. When the Norsemen came, the monks fled through that passage with their valuables.

In 1885 old people still talked about vaults and masonry in the ground. In 1925, near Vatrop, a horse that was ploughing sank into the depth with its hind legs. Large stones came up with it. Beneath was a well, and a cellar with a tiled floor and parts of children's skeletons. They found nothing more. The farmers covered it again. People guessed whether a church had stood there. No trace of a monastery or a passage has ever been found. Wikipedia places that myth around 1700 to 1800.

Klein-Hamming reads the charters like this. Stavoren abbey wanted a foothold. In 1267, with the permission of count Willem I, it was allowed to buy land in the east of Wieringen and put up a grangia, a kind of barn as a temporary shelter. The islanders destroyed it. The monks wandered the island, but they had property in Oosterland. In 1324 they tried again. After the battle of Warns in 1345 the people of Wieringen sided with the count and wanted no Frisian monks. A monks' dwelling has never been found on the island.

In the tenth century the name Varoth occurs. Whether that is present-day Vatrop is not certain. Fotrapa was also used then, and whether that was the same place is not known. There are guesses about the name: a current, a far village, or Old Norse for a village by the water. Those are explanations, not facts. Archaeology does show that the area was inhabited very early and for a long time.