The Vondelmolen and the Neerhof
Near the castle a loose wooden bridge, or ‘vondel’, once crossed the Woluwe on the way to the church. There stood the Vondelmolen of the lords of Diegem. It was lost in the war of 1488-1489, when the army of Maximilian of Austria laid Brabant waste. The lord of Diegem left the ruins and around 1513 built a new mill a little upstream, on the land of the Neerhof or Peltincx Hof on the other bank of the Woluwe.
A ban mill
The new mill was called the Cleyne Molen (little mill), probably to distinguish it from the Grooten Molen (big mill) at the Voorde. With the approval of the Chamber of Accounts it became a ban mill: the lord's subjects had to have their grain ground there. In the 17th century we find millers such as Cornelis Gillis (1639). In 1710 lord Antoon Happart leased ‘the little mill’ to Jan Herincx for nine years, at 130 guilders a year.
The Van Doren and Dekelver families
From 1834 the mill belonged to Sebastiaan Van Doren, later to his son Jan Baptist (1818-1896), who in 1868 had the machinery renewed for four pairs of millstones, and then to Theodoor Van Doren. A path beside the yard was locally called the ‘van Doornstraetje’. In 1918 the mill burned down; a fireproof door saved the stables. Frans Dekelver, who had grown up with the Van Doren family, bought it in 1922 and rebuilt it. He was mayor of Diegem from 1921 to 1938.
Dekelver turned the oil mill into a roller mill. From 1919 to 1956 it ground grain to order for the farmers, and during the war the mill worked flat out to feed people and animals. The mill wheel had already disappeared in 1937, when the Woluwe was covered over; after that the mill ran on fuel oil and, during the war, on electricity. From 1957 it was an industrial mill producing bakers' flour. After Frans (who died in 1970), his sons Walter and Filip were the last millers. On the façade along the Woluwelaan you can still see the cement patch where the wheel turned, and the old stables still stand.