AT A GLANCE
Why go?
At the crossroads where the Kapelsesteenweg meets the Molenweg in the Brasschaat hamlet of Sint-Mariaburg, a round stone windmill rises where a miller's trade has echoed since the Middle Ages. Today the Katerheide Mill no longer grinds grain or turns sails: after careful restoration its brick-and-cedar hull has been reborn as a tapas bar, pairing seven centuries of milling history with a sunny little square made for cyclists and walkers to pause.↗↗↗
This is a heritage landmark you can step inside and sit in, rather than view from behind a fence. The five-storey tower, with its arched window openings and the ghostly traces of an old wooden gallery, is a protected monument, and its lively afterlife as a café is what makes it such an easy and rewarding stop on a walk through the Voorkempen countryside just north of Antwerp.↗↗
A windmill with a second life
The Katerheide Mill (in Dutch, De Katerheidemolen) is a stone tower mill of the gallery, or 'upper-turner', type, built as a grain mill. The structure that stands today went up in the mid-to-late eighteenth century, around 1765, and its name traces to the estate of Baron Petrus De Caters, who bought the mill and much of the surrounding Katerheide land in the early nineteenth century.
