Quellengrundpark, Open-air museum in Borken, Germany
Quellengrundpark is an open-air museum in Borken spread across several hectares with original farm buildings and structures. These buildings display traditional construction methods and agricultural practices that were typical in the region.
The museum was created to preserve rural buildings that would otherwise have been lost by relocating structures from various locations to this site. These structures from different periods together show how building styles and rural life changed over the centuries.
The Backspieker, a 1850 grain store from Ahaus-Wüllen-Oberortwick, houses a wood-fired oven where bread is baked regularly in the old way. The Schirmscheune holds a wooden shoemaker's workshop, a field kiln fired on 28–29 September 1999, and a working replica of an Iron Age bloomery furnace.
The park lies along the former Borken–Burgsteinfurt railway line, and the Heimathaus, Wellenhäuschen, bakehouse, Museschoppe and exhibition barn stand on and around that disused track. The Wellenhäuschen at the entrance sits on the Holtbach spring, whose cold water also feeds the Kneipp water-treading basin used in summer. The pharmacy garden's touch-and-smell gallery carries labels in German and Dutch.
The park's geological garden holds a 6-metre "earth clock" where the whole 4.5 billion years of Earth history are laid out in natural stone paving, scaled to a single 24-hour day. Display cases around it hold fossils from every geological era.
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