De Salamander, The Hague

The Salamander is a sawmill in the Dutch town of Leidschendam. The mill was built in 1777 as a replacement for a burned-out predecessor from the seventeenth century. It was in operation until 1953. The rotary motion of the mill is transmitted to the sawing section by means of drive belts, where canopies attached to the crankshaft set the two sawing frames in motion. The Salamander has a crankshaft with four cranks, but only two of them are used. To these are coupled the two saw windows. From the end of the 19th century a steam engine was used to be able to saw even when there was no wind. This steam engine was fired with waste wood.

In the early 1980s, all that remained of the mill was a ruin. In 1985 the foundation Stichting Opbouw Salamander was founded, which took care of the dismantling and storage of the mill. In 1989, De Salamander was rebuilt in a new location on the Vliet. Originally the sawmill stood a little way from the Vliet. Since October 25, 1995 the mill is in operation again, on a voluntary basis. Next to the mill is the so-called beam hole in the water, where the logs are watered before they are sawn.

Until 2004, the mill's saw hall had a brown color, but due to the high heat absorption, the paint cracked and therefore the mill needed a lot of maintenance. The saw hall is now repainted in gray, a color that was also used for The Salamander in the past.

The mill can be visited on Wednesday afternoons and on Saturdays from 14:00 to 16:00.