The ground you are on used to be raised by about ten metres, and almost reach the top floor of the brick A-lab. The soil contained a lot of peat. Around 1100, this raised bog was gradually reclaimed: ditches were dug and the peat was used as fuel. Hundreds of years before oil company Shell opened its offices here, Noord was an engine of society.

In a slump

The more peat you dig up and burn, the further the soil will sink. This might set you up fora flooding or two. Not ideal. And so we built mounds, dykes and dams, and stayed warm and dry. Peat remained our favourite fuel until well into the nineteenth century. By the time we finally switched to coal, gas and – of course – oil, we had run out of peat anyway.