Moth boiler

The Motketel near Vaassen is a beautiful area full of streams. Because of these streams and springs, the area is even in place 9 in the top 100 of the Historical Geography of the Netherlands.

The Motketel is the place where the groundwater bubbles up. Here the ice-cold water flows into the springs, to our lower village of Vaassen. Underneath this area is a huge water bubble. If you dig a hole here, the groundwater will rise automatically, such a hole is called a 'sprinkler head'. In 'The Moth Cauldron' there are more than twenty sprinkler heads.

Between 1600 and 1800, the inhabitants of Vaassen saw this flowing water as a gold mine, an income for many people. With that flowing water, you could run watermills. With water mills, the water was used for grinding, crushing, cutting, hammering and washing.

In the eighteenth century, seventeen watermills were powered by the water from the sprinkler heads of the Motketel. Paper mills and laundries sprang up like mushrooms, and to this day many people still work in laundries here in Vaassen.

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