Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout, World Heritage Site in the Netherlands

The Netherlands is associated with windmills, but it is Kinderdijk-Elshout that has been registered as a World Heritage site. The Netherlands, known in English as the Netherland (low land), has long been plagued by flooding.In Kinderdijk-Elshout, 19 windmills that were built by the local people for drainage and agriculture still remain.

Here, a World Heritage enthusiast explains why the Kinderdijk-Elshout windmill network is a World Heritage Site in an easy-to-understand manner. Read this and you will definitely learn more about the Kinderdijk-Elshout windmill network!

What is the Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout? Why did they need windmills?

Kinderdijk is located about 13 km southeast of Rotterdam in the southern Netherlands. Since ancient times, the people of the Netherlands have suffered from flooding, and the practice of draining water for agriculture has been practiced for centuries. The solution to this problem was the construction of “windmills”.

The construction of drainage systems in this area began in the Middle Ages and continues to this day: windmills were introduced to the Netherlands through the Crusades in the 12th century, where they were modified for drainage, and in the 18th century they were built for drainage that can be seen today. This not only prevented flooding, but also contributed greatly to technological innovations in agriculture and pastoralism.

In particular, there were 19 registered windmills in Kinderdijk-Elshout, four cross-shaped windmills with four blades of 14 meters each, which rotated gears to move water from the lowlands, just like wind power generation.This system of using windmills for drainage was a uniquely Dutch idea.

For what reason is the Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout on the World Heritage List?

Kindeldijk-Elshout’s windmills were evaluated for the following points.

Registration Criteria (i)
The point that the windmills for drainage are a landscape that testifies to the wisdom and fortitude of the Dutch people for a thousand years.

Registration Criteria (ii)
That the development of drainage lands in the Netherlands is an excellent example that has been adopted in many parts of the world.

Registration Criteria (iv)
The Kindeldijk-Elshout windmill is still in operation today. The point is that it is a technically very Germanic system and represents an important stage in the architectural history of mankind.

World Heritage Mania Conclusions and Comments

Windmills on farmland are just as Japanese people imagine the Netherlands to be, but these were not built for milling, but for drainage. The Netherlands, which used to be full of marshland, became a major agricultural power by developing agricultural land with windmills brought from the Orient. From the Dutch people’s point of view, it can be said that the modern Netherlands owes its existence to windmills.

However, since the current drainage system has shifted from wind power to electricity, windmills, of which there used to be 10,000, have almost disappeared from the Netherlands.Kinderdijk is valuable just for the fact that it is still in operation today and remains beautiful.

*The content here is a discussion derived from research by World Heritage enthusiasts. As for the data, interpretation differs depending on the medium.