The little shop and café

The façade of this beautiful, attractive building is partly copied from Binderseind 3 and 3a in Gemert. This building, originally dating from the late 17th / early 18th century, housed the bakery of the Van Eenbergen family for more than 100 years.

Gemert, but then at Haag 3, used to be home to the grocery store of the Van Eenbergen family. This store no longer exists, but it does have a very long history dating back to 1884.

Today, the shop in the Boerenbondsmuseum is not a grocery store, but a candy shop. A true paradise for young and old where old-fashioned friendly prices can still buy old-fashioned sweets.

Café De Roskam

Where the shop was the place where women could be found, the café or village inn was the meeting place for men. Especially on Sundays, after high mass, to play cards while enjoying a game of beer or a glass of gin (‘beak’), to play a game of billiards or to ‘jensen’ (a kind of billiard game where the ball had to be knocked under a stirrup).

These kinds of occasions also served as a clubhouse for all kinds of associations, such as the guilds (the ‘skut’, as they are called in Gemert). There are currently two more in Gemert: St. Anthony and St. Sebastian’s Guild (Gruun Skut) and the St. George’s Guild (Rooi Skut), as well as handbow and crossbow societies and weavers’ societies. They often saved money in the savings bank, which was lifted twice a year for a meal at the inn on a ‘tar day’, a holiday of the association. Farmers also met weekly in the café when the ‘corn exchange’ was held to trade grain and piglets, for example.

In the past, there used to be a café called De Roskam. At the time, De Roskam was, among other things, the clubhouse of Gemert’s second football club DVS (De Vroolijke Sportbroeders). The café was a busy café, because the then manager had three daughters where the Gemerts folk were only too happy to drink a beer.