windmills in holland.

Windmills have been around for a long time. At one stage Holland was home to 9000 windmills. They were used as a source of electricity and also to grind grain. since then people have come up with new ways to provide people with these services. Quicker and cheaper ways to get the same result. This has had an impact in the windmills, now less that 1000 traditional windmills are left in the Netherlands. Most of thees are used for a purely scenic reason. It is said that windmills are of a Persian origin, and were slowly spread across Europe.

There are still a wide variety of windmills spreed across the whole of the Netherlands:

This is a Post Mill and is one of the Netherlands oldest windmills.

This is the Whip Mill, this was an upgrade of the Post mill. It worked faster and was easier to use.

This windmill is known as the meadow mill or aanberengertj, it brings water from the low lying parts in the ditches on the general level to the polder. They are found mostly in the province of Noord-Holland.

This is a very rare windmill as there are only four still standing in the Netherlands. It is called the Paltrok. They are Timber saw mills.

All images from: http://katspanje.tripod.com/windmills.html