Qualla: Spinnenkop Wedderveer

Spinnenkop Wedderveer: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rasbak, CC BY-SA 3.0. Eiko Jan Feunekes wanted to saw his own lumber. He had an oak plantation in the village of Wedderveer in Groningen, and in 1938 he commissioned the architect Luitje Wiersema to design him a windmill that would do the job. What Wiersema drew was something small, idiosyncratic, and almost extinct: a spinnenkop, a spider-head mill, with its hollow body perched on top of a brick shed. Two years after the mill went up, Feunekes was dead. The mill kept turning.

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Image: Rasbak | CC BY-SA 3.0

Spinnenkop Wedderveer: Spider Head, Brick Body

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rasbak, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Dutch call this type of windmill a spinnenkop because its small head and outstretched sails suggest the silhouette of a spider. Technically it is a hollow post mill, a category that includes mills where the main shaft runs down through a hollow post into a substructure below....

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Image: Rasbak | CC BY-SA 3.0

Spinnenkop Wedderveer: What the Patent Sails Drive

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A. J. van der Wal, CC BY-SA 4.0. The four sails span ten meters across and are carried on a steel windshaft. When the wind turns them, the brake wheel on the windshaft engages the wallower at the top of the upright shaft. The upright shaft runs through the body - called the head on a spinnenkop, because in this ...

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

Spinnenkop Wedderveer: Saved by a Plaque

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rasbak, CC BY-SA 3.0. After Feunekes died in 1940, ownership of the mill changed several times. By 1985 the mill was in such poor condition that someone had begun to consider dismantling it. The structure was tilting; the sails were probably unsafe; the brick shed below needed work. Then in 1990 the m...

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Image: Rasbak | CC BY-SA 3.0

Spinnenkop Wedderveer: A 1938 Mill in 2026

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rasbak, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wedderveer is a small village in the Westerwolde region, north of Bourtange and east of Wedde. The mill stands on the edge of the settlement, the only windmill of its specific type in Groningen province and one of just two of its kind nationally. Public access is by appointment o...

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Image: Rasbak | CC BY-SA 3.0