Every design for Goor

Goor is known as the town that textiles built. It began as two small settlements on raised ground in a marsh, by a ford in the river Regge where the trade road from Deventer headed east, and received city rights in 1263. Its very name is an old word for boggy lowland. Then came the weaving mills of the nineteenth century and, later, the Eternit factory, and with them families from Drenthe and further afield who made Goor their home.

There is a sense here of a town that has always taken people in. A Jewish community grew up over the centuries and left its cemetery on the Borghoek, now a national monument. The Goors Historisch Museum keeps the wider story, and around the town lie the castle of Weldam, havezate Wegdam and the clog museum, the Klompenmuseum 't Oale Ambacht, reminders of the Twente countryside just beyond the last streets.

Today Goor is the largest town in Hof van Twente, with its own station and the town hall for the whole municipality. Whoever left it for work or study knows the feeling of getting off the train here: the Regge, the old centre, home.