Qualla: De Poll

De Poll: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Before there was a villa, before there were rhododendrons, before there was a golf course, this patch of land south of Glimmen had a specific job: stay empty. The local people kept De Pol - the original name - as open heath, an intentional bare gap in the woodland so that approaching raiders would have nowhere to hide. It was a defensive feature, like an unfilled moat. Two centuries later, in 1977, the same property would briefly become a defensive feature again, this time as the rear command post for one of the most dramatic hostage standoffs in postwar Dutch history.

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De Poll: The Empty Field

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Heath - low scrubby vegetation on poor, sandy soil - covered great swaths of the northern Netherlands for centuries. Communities managed it deliberately. Some patches were kept open for grazing sheep. Others, like De Pol, were maintained as sightlines. With the trees cut back, no...

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De Poll: The Flax-Factory Count

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1871 the Van Hasselt heirs sold the estate - by then 24 bundles, 42 square rod, and 26 square cubits, in the marvelously specific Dutch units of the day - to Count Jean Baptiste Remy François Dumonceau de Bergendal. Dumonceau, son of a Napoleonic-era general, ran a flax factor...

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De Poll: The Banker's Villa

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Between 1913 and 1914, banker Johan Herman Geertsema Willemszoon commissioned a new villa from the architect Gerrit Nijhuis. It was a plastered house with Swiss chalet flourishes, sited for the long view westward over the Drentsche Aa and the Westerlanden stream valley. He moved ...

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De Poll: 1977: The Command Post

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 23 May 1977, South Moluccan activists hijacked a passenger train near De Punt, a few kilometres south. They held 50 passengers hostage for twenty days. The Dutch government coordinated its response from several locations, and one of them was the clubhouse at De Poll. Forty sol...

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