Qualla: De Hoop, Stiens

De Hoop, Stiens: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Willem Adrianus Korpershoek, CC BY-SA 4.0. For more than fifty years, the base in Stiens stood alone. The smock above it had been pulled down in 1922 and the eight-sided brick foundation — once supporting a thatched grain mill called De Hoop, The Hope — was reduced to a storage shed in a Frisian village north of Leeuwarden. The story might have ended there. Instead, in 1976, the municipality of Leeuwarderadeel bought the stump and decided to rebuild what had been lost, an act of architectural resurrection that took more than fifteen years, two million guilders, and the patience of a small army of volunteers to complete.

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Image: Willem Adrianus Korpershoek | CC BY-SA 4.0

De Hoop, Stiens: Two Mills, Then None

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taks, Public domain. The original mill on the site went up in 1847 but stood only a few years before owner Jan Pieters Duinkerk replaced it with a larger one, finished in 1854 and run by his son Pieter Jans Duinkerk. The new mill outlived its first family. Through the late nineteenth and early twenti...

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Image: Taks | Public domain

De Hoop, Stiens: The Resurrection

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Udo Ockema, CC BY 3.0. When Leeuwarderadeel bought the base in 1976, the work fell to a millwright named Tacoma from Stiens itself. By 1979 the mill was back in full working order, three storeys of thatched smock rising over the three-storey base. A new company, Molen De Hoop BV, was formed around loca...

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Image: Udo Ockema | CC BY 3.0

De Hoop, Stiens: Stones and Sails

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A. J. van der Wal, CC BY-SA 4.0. The mechanics are worth lingering over. De Hoop is a stellingmolen — a stage mill — with the miller's walkway seven meters up at third-floor level. The cap turns on twenty-four wooden blocks, winded the old way by tailpole and winch with a continuous chain, and the sails span 24....

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Image: A. J. van der Wal | CC BY-SA 4.0

De Hoop, Stiens: The Volunteers Who Came After

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A. J. van der Wal, CC BY-SA 4.0. Commercial milling did not survive the second half of the twentieth century. Customers had drifted to other suppliers — including the nearby De Zwaluw at Burdaard — and demand for traditionally ground flour was simply not enough to keep De Hoop profitable. In 1997 the mill stoppe...

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Image: A. J. van der Wal | CC BY-SA 4.0