Leiden was once the most important textile city in Europe. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the heart of the Dutch cloth industry beat here, with thousands of weavers, spinners, fullers and dyers who together put the city on the world map. Southern Netherlands refugees who moved north after the fall of Antwerp in 1585 pushed the Leiden textile industry firmly to the top; by 1641 a new inspection hall was even built — the Laecken-Halle, which still stands on the bank and now houses Museum De Lakenhal.
The crafts were heavy, and often unpleasant. Fullers worked woollen cloth in tubs with fuller's earth, urine and soap, kneading it with their feet — much as grapes were once trodden. Bleachers laid the cloth out on large grass fields around the city to be whitened by sun, wind and rain. The Lakenhal stood right on the water, so ships full of cloth — sometimes fifty metres long and a hundred pounds in weight — could sail right up to the door. The print above, from the Rijksmuseum collection, shows Leiden from the meadows that long defined the lives of bleachers and weavers.
Around 1700 the cloth industry began to fade; demand shifted to England and new production areas. Leiden remade itself into what is now the university city — founded in 1575 as a reward for the siege the residents had endured. The textile history lives on in museum pieces, street names (Voldersgracht, Weefstraat) and in the architecture of the inner city. And in what Leiden is today: a city full of students, researchers, families and commuters.
Living in Leiden means living between history and bustle — fifteen minutes to The Hague, half an hour to Amsterdam, and usually no time to keep on top of the laundry. We drive set pickup days through the city — Binnenstad, Merenwijk, Stevenshof, Roodenburg. Your bag is ready in the morning and comes back in the evening, clean, ironed and neatly folded with the same driver. That's how Wastas works in Leiden — with the craftsmanship that has belonged to this city for eight centuries.
How Wastas works in Leiden
On the set pickup day our driver is at your door. Clean laundry comes back by appointment — folded or on hangers, however you like it.
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