Old Windmill Site -- 'De Vergulde Ploeg', Breda

Extra -- old photograph of this oilmill
'Vergulde' = 'gold-plated'
'Ploeg' sounds like 'ploog' and means 'plough'.  You can see from the old-fashioned spelling of 'plough' how the sounds used to be similar.  
'The Gold-Plated Plough' ... a beautiful name!

It stood more or less where this block of flats is now standing.  This is the Middellaan ('Middle Lane') and behind this row is another row facing the Nijverheidssingel ("NIGH-verheid').  A 'singel' is a lane next to a canal or river, and the Nijverheidssingel is running parallel to the Mark.  However, it is unclear as to whether the functioning of the mill had anything to do with the river.  It did certainly play a role in the production of natural oil (crushing seeds).

The 'Middellaan' is a modern name.  It used to be called 'de Leuvenaarswal'.  'Wal' translates as 'wall' (which is how the Walstraat in Old Amsterdam became Wall Street in New York).  As for the 'Leuvenaar', this simply meant 'person from Leuven', and Leuven is that famous town in Belgium ('Louvaine' in French).  In short, a landing area on the river for people from Leuven, or maybe that stretch of the river where those people once had a community.

The windmill itself was built around 1750 (it replaced an older one built in 1695) and was demolished around 1879.  The miller, Pieter Schouten van den Berg, actually managed three windmills in Breda (Het Fortuin was one of them).  After he and his wife died, the owner, a certain Mr. Betz, continued to run it, but after his death in 1878, no one was interested in taking over the responsibilities, not even the children, so the family possessions were most likely divided between the heirs, and the things no one else wanted were auctioned off.  While Het Fortuin was owned by somebody else, no one wanted this one and it was demolished.  There were no large structures next to it at the time and this area was one huge polder (outside the medieval city centre, Breda used to be one huge swamp).  Standing here today, it can be challenging to imagine what it all looked like before it became a built-up residential area.

A very sunny day for cycling and some housework.  In the evening, a ZOOM meeting with the writers group and AW had Wednesday regional bridge online.