Boterhuispolder - Leiderdorp

The Boterhuispolder was created in 1634. Several small farmers in the area then decided to jointly protect their low-lying agricultural land against the water.

A long dike will be built around the polder and all ditches will be connected to a common drainage channel, a wetering area. After that, one big mill was built to drain the polder dry - the Boterhuismolen.
The ditch pattern in the polder clearly shows that the area used to consist of individually drained areas of land.

The Boterhuispolder is significantly lower than the surrounding land. This is because the land in this area is kept dry for much longer than the surrounding land. Before the year 1200, the Boterhuispolder was used as agricultural land. This area was kept as dry as possible. And because the land consisted of peat soil, keeping dry also started to settle. The further the peat dried, the lower it got. In the surrounding country, this process only started much later, which explains the large difference in height.