Pest cemetery

About 1 kilometer east of Alphen lies the hamlet of Boslust. The cemetery, named after the hamlet, is located on the left side of the road. The only plague cemetery in the Netherlands that can be visited.
On the site of the cemetery, which is essentially only a memorial now, stands a stone monument by the Alphen architect Jan Jacobs from 1934. This is in memory of the more than 500 residents of Alphen who died from the effects of the plague in the 17th century. Plague epidemics broke out in Alphen in 1604 and 1625. The dead had to be buried outside the village at the command of the bailiff in a large heath field that belonged to the Tongerlo monastery. The names of the deceased are listed in the death book of Dr. Erens, which is preserved in the parish archive.
The crosses, black with a white border, are in memory of the two priests who cared for the plague victims at that time. They also died from the plague.
After that, people preferred to forget the cemetery. It was, of course, a macabre place that no one was looking for. Pastor Binck, also a local historian, searched for the cemetery in 1932 and found a coffin with remains in this location. He found the location on an old map from 1715 in the archives of the Tongerlo Abbey. In 1934 it was restored with the stone monument. However, the found coffin with bones has never been found again. Until the 1990s, the cemetery was regularly maintained and pilgrimages took place. After that, maintenance stopped and the monument fell into disrepair. It was restored in 2010 with the help of volunteers.

Hermans Cor Meerle