Kinderdijk Mill Network
A Testimony to Dutch Ingenuity

By Toni Dabbs

Windmills are believed to have originated in eastern Persia near Afghanistan. And although they have been used around the world, they have become synonymous with the Netherlands, where they were introduced in the Middle Ages. The Dutch refined the windmill and increased its efficiency, harnessing its power to perform a variety of tasks, including  grinding grain, operating sawmills and pumping water.

Of the estimated 10,000 windmills that once dotted Holland, approximately 1,000 remain, all registered as national monuments. They are owned and maintained by organizations such as the Dutch Windmill Association, by towns or villages, and occasionally by businesses or individuals, but the national government subsidizes their upkeep.

While most are merely shells of their former selves, about one-third remain operational. Some even continue to perform the functions for which they were built hundreds of years ago. Regular operation of working windmills is necessary to help prevent deterioration of their mechanisms. Most operational mills are kept turning by the 700 licensed individuals who must pass exams to qualify as members of the Guild of Volunteer Millers.

The largest group of windmills, 19 polder draining mills dating from 1740, is situated at Kinderdijk, 15 kilometers southeast of Rotterdam. Kinderdijk is a village built in a polder at the confluence of the rivers Lek and Noord. A polder is an area of land below sea level and therefore subject to flooding.

Because much of the Netherlands sits in polders, the Dutch of necessity developed means of removing water from flooded land and made great advances to the technology of handling water through the use of windmills. The Kinderdijk site illustrates the typical features associated with this technology: dykes, canals, high and low reservoirs, pumping stations, administrative buildings and the series of beautifully preserved windmills.

Windmills operate using a series of shafts and wheels. The mill is turned so that its sails face the oncoming wind, and its sailcloths are partially or fully set, depending on the force of the wind. The wind rotates the sails on the windshaft, which conveys movement to the wallower wheel. The wallower turns the upright shaft down the center of the mill, and that shaft is connected to a wheel that operates the functional mechanism of the mill. In the case of a water pumping mill, it turns either a waterwheel or an Archimedes screw to lift water and remove it from a low lying area.

The Kinderdijk site offers visitors an opportunity to see this early technology in action. At least one mill operates each weekday between April and October, and all rotate on Saturday afternoons during July and August. During the first week of September, they are dramatically illuminated at night.

Citing it as “an outstanding man-made landscape that bears powerful testimony to human ingenuity and fortitude in draining and protecting an area by the development and application of hydraulic technology,” UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) designated the Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout a World Heritage Site in 1997.

Toni Dabs is frequent contributor to The Cultured Traveler.