The grain silos in the port of Assen, Hekmans Boô in Schoonebeek, the artwork Broken Circle/Spiral Hill in a sand excavation near Emmen, the Holthersluis near Beilen, the polder pumping station at Peize, De Berk mill and the ‘small’ radio-telescope near Dwingeloo.
What do they have in common? They are all new protected provincial monuments. Every Sunday we put one in the spotlight.
It used to be – just like nowadays – only a wet and swampy intention in the Peizer and Eelder Mads. Yet there has been a period when the area was a lot drier. This was due to the pumping station for the Peizer- en Eeldermade, built in 1935 by order of the water board with the same name: the Peizer and Eeldermaden.
The area used to be mainly peat and regularly flooded at the beginning of the 20th century. The water board came in 1928 especially to polder the wet area and to make it suitable for agriculture. Newspaper articles from that time show that the area was found very suitable for horticultural companies and even flower bulb cultivation.
New waterways and canals were dug, existing. The area was reclaimed and there were roads and farms. Age -old reliefs in the landscape such as Veenterpen and streams disappeared. With that also a large part of the original nature such as blue grasses. Nature became agricultural land, mainly pasture area.
The excavation work was done by the unemployed who were put to work in the Peizer and Eelder Mads through a work-creating program. More and more peat workers in Southeast Drenthe became unemployed because of the rise of coal for heating houses and running factories and were able to dig a scanty wage for a while in the Kop van Drenthe.
The work was tough, the working weeks about 50 hours, the circumstances terrible and the wage was just just enough to make ends meet with a family. In 1932 it yielded labor conflicts in the Peizer and Eelder Mads.
The pumping station was built on the northwest side of the area and had to bring the surplus water to the sea via the Peizerdiep, Koningsdiep and Aduarderdiep at Zoutkamp. The pumping station and the accompanying manager’s house is built in simple Amsterdam school style. Sober with little fringe. The red brick buildings are set up in such a way that you can keep an eye on the pumping station from the manager’s house. The manager’s house is actually a chooser farm.
200 m³ of water per minute can remove the pumping station. There was a thick Dutch diesel engine from Stork in Pompgebouw. But in 1975 it was replaced by an English engine.
In the 70s of the last century, the city of Groningen fell on the Peizer and Eelder Maden. The expansion of ‘city’ had to come here. The inhabitants of the villages in the area thought very differently and after protests, Groningen exchanged the gaze to the north for city expansion. The pumping station was able to run quietly and keep the polder dry.
But in the 80s and 90s there will be some regret about the disappeared nature of the Peizer- and Eelder Maden. But: there were also pieces that were fairly unaffected. In recent decades, Natuurmonumenten buys land on a large scale in this area to bring this back as much as possible to a natural state. This means: little fertilization and highly controlled grazing and mowing policy in order to give the original flora and fauna more chance.
Now a large part of the polder has become nature again due to controlled watering of the area. The Onlanden also functions as a water storage to nature. Exactly vice versa. Only around the pumping station is a part of the meadow landscape and the polder structure still recognizable. Due to all the changes and the construction of a larger pumping station, the PEIIZER and EELDER Maden has lost its function. The Diesel pumping station is maintained and tested once a month by the residents of the former manager’s home.
The pumping station and the house have received the monument status because much is still original, there are not many of these diesel pumping stations left and it once had an important function in water management.