Immediately north of Leeuwarden, the capital of the province of Friesland, there lies a strange No­man's-land. One of the ugliest new neighbourhoods in the Netherlands comes to an abrupt end on the edge of meadows stretching into infinity. The explanation is to be found in the presence of an airbase. Fl6s roar past with great regularity, making a literally ear-splitting din. But when the monsters do fal1 silent, then suddenly you have an oasis of peace and beauty.

The tiny village of Jelsum is home to one of the finest country houses in Friesland - the Dekema State. In part of its walls you can still see the remains of the square brick house that originally stood here - a house that was built to be easily defensible. In the 15th century, ­Friesland, like the rest of the Netherlands, was riven by all kinds of civil wars which are a puzzle to modem historians, as nobody now knows exact I y who was fighting whom or why. Be this as it may, in Friesland the sup­porters of one party had gone on the rampage in Leeuwarden (and on a Good Friday, too!) and the house of one of their opponents had been burned down. The culprits fled to the Dekema State and hid in the cellar, putting up a fight from behind the embrasures which can still be seen to this day. This didn't help. The thugs were smoked out and dragged off to Leeuwarden. Fearing the worst, they turned to drink to raise their spirits, so that half of them weren't even capable of making confession before being sentenced to death. The evening before Easter Sunday, they were all hanged. This is just one of the many stories in the his­tory of the Dekema State.

The oldest part of the building still recalls those turbulent times, but otherwise it's an idyllic country house dating from a later period. The original build­ing grew and grew. The owners lived off the income from the various farms they leased out. They laid out gardens round the house fur the benefit and the delight of all. The beauti­ful architecture of the house and the 18th-cen­tury features of the interior were visible signs of their wealth. Times were not quite so good in the 19th century and they decided to economise radically by simply removing an entire floor and lowering the roof. The house remained in the hands of the same family fur some 200 years. In 1830, one of them joined the Frisian militia and went off to Belgium to put down the revolution. His portrait is hang­ing in the hall with his cap and sword above it. The house is haunted, too. From time to time, Maria, who once lived in the house, walks by night, groaning and lamenting as she looks fur her second husband, whose por­trait hangs in the hall. In the room where guests were once received and where mar­riages are now performed, there are rows of family portraits on the wall, including one of an 18th-century lady who acquired a lover two centuries after her death. It happened that, in the first decades of the 20th century, the then well-known detective-story writer Havank was a regular guest at Dekema. He had two great passions - his dog, which is buried under a memorial stone by a big tree in the garden, and the 18th-century lady worse portrait fascinated him. He always carried a photo of the painting with him and, it is said, took it to his grave. Wandering round Dekema State is a delight. The garden is a joy, the rooms are furnished with great care. There is a 'short-visit chair' which was offered to some visitors in the hope that they would not stay long. In the hallway, there is a bicycle dating from 1878, known, understandably as a 'boneshaker'. A splendid longcase clock, made in Leeuwarden, chimes the hours. you could almost believe you were back in the age of periwigs until the din of the jet planes drags you rudely back into the 2lth century.

Round about September 2004