page_title: Scheveningen
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Scheveningen / History
context_page_description: Scheveningen is one of the eight districts of The Hague, Netherlands, as well as a subdistrict of that city. Scheveningen is a modern seaside resort with a long, sandy beach, an esplanade, a pier, and a lighthouse. The beach is popular for water sports such as windsurfing and kiteboarding.
  The harbour is used for both fishing and tourism.
context_section_description: The earliest reference to the name Sceveninghe goes back to around 1280.
  Though the area has been inhabited by people since pre-history and during the Roman era the first inhabitants of the place with the name may have been Anglo-Saxons. Other historians favour a Scandinavian origin. Fishing was the main source of food and income.
  The Battle of Scheveningen was fought between English and Dutch fleets off the coast of the village on 10 August 1653. Thousands of people gathered on the shore to watch.
  Montagu's  flagship picked up the English king at Scheveningen in order to accomplish the Restoration.
  A road to neighbouring The Hague was constructed in 1663 (current name: Scheveningseweg).
  In 1470, a heavy storm destroyed the church and half the houses. The village was again hit by storms in 1570, 1775, 1825, 1860, 1881, and 1894. After this last storm, the villagers decided to build a harbour. Until then, the fishing boats had had a flat bottom (bomschuiten), and were pulled up the beach. By around 1870, over 150 of these boats were in use. Once the harbour had been constructed in 1904, more modern ships replaced the bomschuiten.
  In 1818, Jacob Pronk constructed a wooden building on a dune near the sea, from where people could bathe from four separate rooms. It marked the start of Scheveningen as a bathing resort. Since then, Scheveningen has attracted numerous tourists from all over Europe, notably from Germany.
  The hotel and restaurant Kurhaus were opened in 1886.
  The village attracted a number of Dutch artists over the centuries, who painted the bomschuiten drawn up on the beach, or fishermen at work in the North Sea. Notable painters who recorded the village include Adriaen van de Velde, Simon de Vlieger, and Hendrik Willem Mesdag, whose large panorama, 14 m high and 120 m wide, preserves the view of Scheveningen in 1881.
  The International Skating Union was founded in Scheveningen in 1892.
  Anecdotal evidence exists of the name Scheveningen being used as a shibboleth during World War II to identify German spies: they would pronounce the initial "Sch" differently from Dutch native speakers.
  Contrary to popular belief, Scheveningen was never an independent municipality, but it has its own coat of arms, officially recognised by The Hague local council (proposal 136 of 23 March 1984); even in the Middle Ages, it was part of the same administrative region as The Hague; the region had a special status within the county of Holland because of the presence of the Count of Holland.
  Nevertheless, Scheveningen always had a strong identity of its own. For instance, it had its own football club, playing in the highest Dutch division (its name was "Scheveningen Holland Sport"). In the course of the second half of the former century, this club was forced to merge with ADO Den Haag.
  German occupation from May 1940 until May 1945 had a large impact on the area as it was also the location of several notable events.
  -V2 missiles aimed at the United Kingdom and Belgian accidentally crashed in Scheveningen.
  -Many Jewish citizens were arrested and forced to the working and extermination camps in Germany and Poland.
  -The population was forced to abandon the area to make way for defence works as part of the 'Atlantikwall' (remains of which can still be found in the form of bunkers and blocks of post-modern housing to replace those destroyed for defense purpose)
  -As part of said Atlantikwall Scheveningen became a station for a larger number of German military personel.
  -Spies on missions landed on the beach of Scheveningen on several occasions
  -Scheveningen Prison was utilised to imprison citizens who opposed the Nazi occupation (many of whom were executed at the Waalsdorper Vlakte area just outside of Scheveningen which still plays a key role in the national ww2 memorial. 
  From 21 April 1960, the pirate radio station Radio Veronica broadcast its programmes from an anchorage in the North Sea about four miles off the Scheveningen coast, originally calling itself Vrije Radio Omroep Nederland (VRON); Free Radio Station [of the] Netherlands. It was
caption: The beach at Scheveningen by Adriaen van de Velde, painted 1658
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