Kinderdijk Windmills: How the Dutch Learned to Live Amidst Water
In my childhood, I read a captivating story about a Dutch boy who saved his village from a flood. Walking along a dike, he notices water trickling through a small hole. Realizing that the leak may weaken the dike and inundate the village, he tries to stop it by plugging the hole with his finger and holding still until help arrives.
That tale formed my earliest impression of the Netherlands—a resilient nation situated below sea level and that relied on man-made dikes for protection.
To see its famous dikes and windmills had been my lifelong dream. So when I decided to visit the country, Kinderdijk, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was at the top of my list. Kinderdijk is a village in the Netherlands with a concentration of 18th-century drainage windmills, which protected the territory from inundation. I wanted to understand how the Dutch lived on low-lying, marshy land and how windmills drained excess water and made the land suitable for farming and settlement.
Why Kinderdijk Needed Windmills
Kinderdijk lies in the Alblasserwaard polder, a low-lying region between several rivers in the western Netherlands. (Polder is a tract of low land reclaimed from the sea, marshes, or river floodplains.) Much of the area was covered by waterlogged peat bogs, and the land was vulnerable to flooding from surrounding rivers and, in some places, the influence of the sea. Early settlers built their homes on patches of higher, drier ground. They dug ditches and canals to drain the surrounding land and make it fit for cultivation. As settlements grew, these local efforts transformed into a wider water management system; dikes were erected to hold back water, canals connected, reservoirs built, and sluices installed to regulate water levels.
Draining the peat, however, had an unexpected consequence: It dried and shrank, leaving parts of the reclaimed land lower than the surrounding rivers. Rainwater accumulated in these fields, and the water could no longer drain into the rivers by gravity alone, particularly when rivers rose. The excess water from the polders had to be lifted by machinery (a scoop wheel or other lifting mechanisms) out into higher canals or into storage basins known as the boezem before it could be discharged into the rivers when water levels allowed. And windmills were built to harness wind energy to power the drainage machinery.
The 16 Windmills of Kinderdijk
Between 1738 and 1740, 16 drainage windmills were built at Kinderdijk, because the existing drainage methods were no longer sufficient. The mills were divided equally between the Nederwaard and Overwaard drainage systems, the two water management networks in Kinderdijk. The Nederwaard mills were erected staggered to make better use of the available wind, while the Overwaard ones stood in a straight line to align with the narrower embankment.
These windmills are still well-preserved, and a few are open for visitors.
Inside a Kinderdijk Windmill: The Miller’s Home
Wanting to understand how the windmills worked and the life of families who operated them, we stepped inside one. It was both a working mill and a cramped home. The rooms were small, the stairs steep, and heavy machinery took up much of the space.
The ground floor housed the massive gears that turned the water wheel outside.
The first floor, which was the main living quarters, had a kitchen, sitting room, and bedrooms for the parents and the younger children. During the freezing winter months, this was the only room in the mill with heating. The family gathered around the stove to keep themselves warm. The household items and children’s toys displayed inside offered a glimpse of their daily life in the cramped quarters.
The second floor had two more built-in cupboard beds, with straw mattresses, shared by the older children. With no heating, they huddled under heavy quilts to keep warm.
The third floor had the machinery that powered the mill. At night, when the wind picked up, the machinery’s loud thumping and creaking disturbed the occupants’ sleep.
The miller ’s job involved reading the weather, turning the heavy cap to face the wind, and adjusting the canvas sails.
In winters , the family bathed and did their laundry in a separate boiler house. In summers, they washed outside on a wooden deck beside the water.
From Windmills to Modern Pumping Stations
The wind, although a free energy source, was unpredictable. When it blew strongly, the mills could pump water for hours, but when it stopped and the land needed draining, the excess water could not be pumped out. This forced the Dutch to look for more reliable power sources.
The first major change came in 1868, when a steam-powered pumping station, the Wisboom, was built at Kinderdijk. Rather than replacing the windmills, it worked alongside them.
In the 1920s, Kinderdijk’s drainage systems were modernized further. The Wisboom pumping station was converted from steam-powered to electric-powered. Between 1924 and 1927, both the drainage systems adopted mechanical pumping, one using electricity and the other diesel. By 1927, half the windmills had stopped regular water-lifting, while the other half continued operating for several more decades.
During the Second World War, when fuel shortages limited the use of modern pumping stations, the old windmills were brought back into service to keep the polders dry.
Kinderdijk’s Windmills Today
Today, the pumping stations handle most of the drainage; nevertheless, the windmills are well maintained and can still pump water when needed—a backup as and when the modern system fails.
After visiting Kinderdijk, we took a boat back to Rotterdam. I was content having seen the engineering that made it possible to drain the wetlands and control water levels; however, my thoughts kept returning to the miller’s family—their hard life in cramped, draughty windmills, shaped by the demands of wind and water.
Kinderdijk is a testimony to the courage and persistence of the Dutch people.
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