De Cruquius Pumping Station and the Reclamation of Haarlemmermeer

The deeper story

Anyone travelling through Haarlemmermeer today is moving across the bed of a vanished lake. Roads, fields, settlements, business parks, railway lines and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol occupy land that did not emerge until the middle of the nineteenth century. De Cruquius Pumping Station stands on the western edge of the polder, precisely between the higher water of the Ringvaart and the much lower former lake bed.

Haarlemmermeer developed from several smaller peat lakes between Haarlem, Amsterdam and Leiden. Cultivation and drainage caused the surrounding peat to subside, while storms and wave action eroded the banks. The separate lakes expanded and eventually merged into one large body of water. Villages, fields and roads around the edges moved ever closer to the lake or disappeared entirely.

The expanding lake became known as the Waterwolf. The name referred to the way the water appeared to devour new pieces of land repeatedly. Yet the lake was not merely a threat. People fished and sailed on it, and it provided a connection between surrounding communities. Reclamation therefore did not simply remove useless water, but profoundly altered an existing landscape and pattern of use.

Plans to drain Haarlemmermeer already existed in the seventeenth century. The size of the lake, however, made the project exceptionally expensive and technically difficult. Wind-powered drainage would have required an estimated 160 mills. These mills would also have had to move vast quantities of water over a considerable difference in height and continue keeping the new polder dry afterwards.

Severe storms in November and December 1836 drove the water towards Amsterdam and Leiden. Low-lying areas flooded in several places and the lake came dangerously close to important cities. King William I then decided that reclamation could no longer be postponed. The project became a national undertaking combining flood protection, land creation and modern engineering.

From 1840, thousands of labourers dug a Ringvaart almost 63 kilometres long around the lake. The excavated soil was used to construct a ring dike beside it. The canal had to carry away the pumped water, while the dike separated the surrounding land from the area that was to be drained. These preparatory works alone transformed the lake shore into one long construction site.

Steam power was selected definitively in 1843. For a reclamation project of this scale, that was a bold decision. Three large pumping stations were to empty the lake: De Leeghwater, De Lijnden and De Cruquius. They were positioned at different points along the ring canal so that water could be removed from several sections of the lake.

Construction of De Cruquius began in 1847 to a design by engineer Jan Anne Beijerinck. The circular form of the Gothic Revival building was directly related to the arrangement of the machinery. Eight pumps were positioned like spokes around one central steam engine. Tall windows, battlements and heavy walls gave the station the appearance of a castle, but almost every element of the building served the machinery inside.

The vertical Cornish engine had a cylinder 3.66 metres in diameter. The movement of its central piston was transferred through eight enormous balance beams to pumps outside the building. These lifted water from the steadily falling lake into the higher Ringvaart. Firemen fed the boilers and engineers monitored the installation. Work continued day and night whenever maintenance, fuel supplies and water levels allowed.

De Leeghwater began pumping in 1848. De Lijnden and De Cruquius followed in 1849. As the water level fell, the bed of the lake gradually appeared. The reclamation was completed in July 1852. Where ships had sailed only shortly before, there was now a wet and almost empty plain of approximately eighteen thousand hectares.

A second major undertaking then began: making the new ground usable. Canals, ditches, roads and plots divided the land into a strict pattern. Hoofddorp and Nieuw-Vennep developed at important intersections. Farms, residential districts, motorways, business parks and Schiphol appeared later. The modern activity of Haarlemmermeer therefore literally rests on the bed of the former Waterwolf.

De Cruquius remained necessary after reclamation to remove rainwater and seepage from the low polder. The station was taken out of service in 1932. Its boilers disappeared, but the central engine, balance beams and large parts of the pumps survived. Early attention to industrial heritage saved the complex from demolition and gave it a museum function. Inside, the engine and its eight arms make the scale of the reclamation tangible. Outside, first look at the water in the Ringvaart and then at the much lower land. That difference in level explains why Haarlemmermeer not only had to be drained once, but must still be pumped continuously.