leesten /Hoog Buurlo Part 1

Ugchelen is a village in the municipality of Apeldoorn in the Netherlands Province Gelderland, located southwest of Apeldoorn on the eastern "slope" of the Veluwe massif, with 6331 inhabitants (January 1, 2018). Ugchelen is an official residential location with a residence code (2256) and its own postal code (7339). The inhabitants are called "Ugchelnaren or Ugchelse". The village is characterized by the large number of detached houses and villas.

Prehistory

At the time when the hunebeds were built in Drenthe, around 2000 BC, this people had also advanced into the Veluwe. They were already familiar with the production of ceramics of a type that can be easily distinguished from others. Fragments of them were found under Elspeet and at the Huneschans in Uddel, but also further south, on the Keienberg, where today Heidehof is in our Ugchelen, where fragments of three different pots were discovered. Additionally, a perforated stone was found, which was probably worn as jewelry. From this late Stone Age period, two stone hammers from Ugchelen are also known, one with a hole found on the Hattemseveld and a similarly shaped hammer not far from Altena.

From the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, the latter being the centuries immediately before and after the beginning of our era, burial mounds were or are available, which are attributed to Germanic tribes, with the Chamavens being the most important in our region. Thus, there are four large mounds at the foot of the Bakenberg, near Caesarea and in the Engelanderholt. Urns of a tall and broad type, often with notched edges marked by fingerprints, were again found at the Bakenberg and on the Mettaweg.

Formation of the village

Due to the elevation difference, which varies between 21 and 90 meters above sea level, it was possible to create sprengen in the village. These sprengen were used to generate water power. Ugchelen had 11 watermills that were mainly used as grain or paper mills.

When Jacob Jacobs founded the first paper mill in Ugchelen in 1613, at the location where the Altena mill stood until a few years ago, he could not foresee that the appearance of Ugchelen would completely change due to paper manufacturing. Later, paper was produced in ten mills on Ugchelen's territory. The mills Hattem, De Bouwhof, and Methusalem were located slightly outside the mark on Wormen's territory. The mills were all situated on dug sprengen and dammed streams, which drain to the northeast into the Grift. The settlement increasingly shifted from the old Enk to the mills, resulting in a scattered settlement up to the Eendracht. Therefore, the current center of Ugchelen is no longer at the original location.

Around 1795, half of the 54 male residents of Ugchelen were employed in paper manufacturing. At that time, there were 146 people living in the village. The youth also attended school in Beekbergen. In 1844, a change occurred when a number of locals submitted a request to establish their own school. On December 10, 1844, the contract "for the establishment of a school in the neighborhood" was signed by the municipality of Apeldoorn and the paper maker Johannes van Delden Mzn. from the Steenbeek paper mill. A house belonging to the factory was set up as a school until "a suitable and appropriately equipped building is provided for it". After a comparative exam, Evert Roelofsen was appointed as a teacher. A street in Ugchelen was named after him.