STEAM ENGINE MUSEUM

If you go over the dike from Wervershoof to Medemblik, you will see the difference in height between the IJsselmeer on one side and the low-lying land of the Vier Noorder Koggen water board on the other. This place, southeast of Medemblik, had been one of the places where the water from the bathtub, which had become West Friesland due to subsidence, was knocked out for centuries. Until the beginning of the 16th century, the water here could simply be discharged by opening the floodgates at low tide. Due to the digging of ditches and draining with windmills, the land constantly declined afterwards.
Around 1825, the water board de Vier Noorder Koggen was drained by 25 polder mills. At Aartswoud there were 10 and at Medemblik 15 mills that cascaded the water through a mill gully on the former Zuiderzee. A mill corridor is a number of cooperating polder mills for drying and keeping a polder dry. Due to the maximum head of about 1.50 meters per mill wheel, it was necessary for deeper polders that the water was raised in 'steps'. A mill gully is a piece of water surrounded by a quay in which the mills grind the polder water. The water was ground so high in these gullies that it could be discharged into the sea via discharge sluices at low tide.
Because polder mills depend on wind, the water board of the polder De Vier Noorder Koggen had a steam pumping station built in 1869 to support the mills. Due to the expansion of the steam pumping station in 1907, the mills became superfluous in one fell swoop.
Finally, in 1977, a modern electric pumping station was built in Wervershoof. The steam pumping station is therefore superfluous and no longer used as such. The current destination is Steam Engine Museum.

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