Wierdedorp Ranum
The village of Ranum is one of the few remaining inhabited mounds.
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A wierde is an artificial hill raised long ago (between 500 BC and 1000 AD). By building a house on such a mound, the inhabitants were protected from the water from the Wadden Sea that regularly flooded the salt marsh. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many mounds were excavated. Because the construction of dykes made them superfluous, but also because the mound soil was often enormously fertile. This did not happen in Ranum. Nor in the nearby mounds Groen Wier and Rode Wier.
Ranum also once had a medieval church. It was demolished in 1820. The church bell has hung in the church of Hornuizen since 1828. Ranum's old churchyard is still there.
The mounds are now archaeologically protected. This means that the ground has to be left intact as much as possible.