Molen De Koornbloem

Molen De Koornbloem is a round brick tower mill with a stage, standing on the edge of the Goese Polder district of Goes. In the middle of the seventeenth century the town had about nine mills; De Koornbloem is the only one of the old mills that still works.

Milling in Goes goes back a long way. Archive records mention a mill site on the north side of the town as early as 1358, and in 1399 Duke Albrecht of Bavaria granted the town milling rights, meaning farmers from the surrounding area brought their grain to be ground here, paying the miller and a tax to the town. De Koornbloem itself was the project of Pieter Remijn, who already owned the old north mill and who in 1801 received permission from the town to build a new corn mill. The keystones above the doors read 1801, while the national monuments register gives 1809, the year Remijn asked permission to build a horse mill beside it. That horse mill let him keep grinding flour for the town's bakers when the wind dropped; it was demolished in 1838, and only the street name Paardeweg, horse road, recalls it.

The mill changed hands several times in the nineteenth century before the miller's man Leendert de Jonge from Rilland bought it in 1885. His family kept it until 1954. In 1939 the mill was modernised and the old miller's house replaced by the building that still stands beside it. During the Second World War the German occupiers requisitioned the mill for their food supply. Local accounts say it also served as a hiding place, since the house was not searched. After the family business went bankrupt in 1954 the mill passed to the local farmers' bank and was leased out, but commercial milling ended in 1967.

A plan to restore the mill was drawn up in 1985 and the restoration was completed in the mid-1990s. Since then the municipality of Goes has owned it, and a volunteer miller keeps it turning. De Koornbloem is a national monument.

On days when the mill is running visitors can see the stage, the sails and the machinery at work, and flour ground here has been sold in the shop on the ground floor. It is a short walk from the old centre and suits families and anyone curious about how a Dutch town was fed before industrial milling.