Every design for Bocholt

Bocholt is a textile town at heart. For most of two centuries its looms and spinning mills set the rhythm of daily life, and although only a few manufacturers remain, the LWL-Industriemuseum TextilWerk Bocholt - Weberei keeps the story of those years in the old mill halls. Today the town makes transmissions for wind turbines, phones and bicycles, but locals still talk about the mills.

The town lies in the far west of the Münsterland, though the land already belongs to the flat Lower Rhine plain. Its northern boundary is the Dutch border itself, with Aalten and Winterswijk on the other side, and the district of Suderwick runs right up against the Dutch town of Dinxperlo. The Bocholter Aa flows through the centre, and the settlement first grew up around a crossing over it. A bishop of Münster granted it a town charter to hold the frontier against Cleves and Guelders. Ten old villages, from Barlo to Suderwick, now belong to the town, but the centre is where everyone meets.

There, St. Georg and the Historisches Rathaus stand close together. Look closely at the old town seals and you will find a beech tree, the Buche of Buchholz, from which the town's name is traditionally traced.