Ruby Tuesday The Shooting Constable Windmill

I find myself looking for ruby pictures week after week
ever since I joined Ruby Tuesday for the first time a couple of weeks ago.
It has become a weekly habit, or should I call it an addiction, hmm?
Anyway, as some of you might already know,
my hubby and I made a photo hunting trip again last week,
- this also has become an addiction, I should add -
and when we came across this windmill,
I knew I had found my rubies for this week!

It was a perfect day for a wedding, 08/08/08.
(You can see a bigger version of it in my Weekly Winners post from last Sunday)
But also a perfect windmill for a Ruby Tuesday.

I walked around it, and took pictures from every possible angle.

As you can see, there was some heavy weather coming up from one side,

while on the other side, the sun was still shining ...

And of course ... I'm saving the best for last!

Or at least I think I did?

Now, some of you might get confused.
I live in Belgium, not Holland.
We in Belgium, we have our own windmills.
In fact, the technology to build windmills was invented in Flanders,
(Belgium that is) don't let those Dutch people fool you!

Most of the windmills were lost throughout the years,
but in the last twenty or thirty years,
a lot of them have been restored and are functioning again.
This one was relocated in 1981.
It came from a village close to where my grandparents used to live.
A police officer trying to prevent that fired a bullet into the mill.
The mill is now called "Schietsjampettermolen" in Flemish.
If I translate that it would be something like " the Shooting Constable Windmill"
How's that for a story huh?


Update:
Quilly asked me in a comment:
How would shooting the windmill prevent it from being relocated? And why was the constable trying to prevent it from being relocated? Was it being kidnapped against its will? I need a bit more of this story!
quilly | Homepage |


Well, I looked it up for you.
The original mill on this location dated from the 16th century.
But it was destroyed by a storm.
In 1981, a certain Mr Van Hoe bought the Houtavemill.
which stood in Houtave, the village next to my grandparents.

He wanted to restore it and put it back up again in Kruishoutem.
It was in a very bad state when Mr Van Hoe bought the mill.

This is the mill on its previous location in Houtave.
It was dismantled and taken down, to be transported
to the new location, but the local chief of police
shot into the air twice to try to scare away the workmen
and thus trying to prevent the relocation of the mill.
As far as I can see, there must have been
some kind of a dispute on the sale of the mill.
There was a legal battle for more than ten years
before the judge finally decided the mill was to stay in Kruishoutem.
They renamed it Schietsjampettermolen,
and I translated that to "the Shooting Constable Windmill."


This is what's left of it on the previous location in Houtave.
(I nicked the two previous pictures from MrGoogle,
I hope he'll forgive me)
There, that's the whole story as far as I was able to track it down!

Update number two:
Now this is really something special folks.
I never knew the story of that windmill
up until now, when I did the research for Quilly.
I found the black and white picture, and updadet the post with it.
I posted the update, and went back to my chores here at the house.
While making up the bed, I had this lightbulb moment.
That's when I remembered ...

I was sitting on the backseat of my grandmothers bike,
looking at that mill as we drove by it every week when I was a kid!!!

I had no idea when I was taking pictures last Sunday
that that was one and the same mill from my childhood memories!!!
No wonder I was so attracted to it!!!
Thanks Quilly for making me do the research!

For more Ruby Tuesday pictures,
visit Mary the Teach at Work of the Poet.