Initially, the Dutch built dikes to protect their reclaimed farmland, but the threat of flooding was never far away. In 1421, a disastrous flood, the St. Elizabeth's Flood inundated the polders of the Grote Waard, the water management district near Dordrecht, destroying many villages.
After this flood, the Dutch experimented with drainage methods and finally lit upon the windmill as the best mechanism for scooping up water and moving it to a basin or reservoir.
At Kinderdijk, two water management districts built windmills, holding basins and sluice systems in order to move water from the surrounding polders to the nearby Lek River. Windmills use scoop wheels that resemble paddlewheels to lift water into a holding basin ("boezem"). A second set of holding basins became necessary by the 1700s because the polder lands were slowly subsiding; it was too difficult for a single windmill to lift water to the required level. In 1738, this windmill and seven others just like it were built along the outer basins of the Nederwaard water management district.