Laundry & ironing service in Leiderdorp

Leiderdorp is older than Leiden. Excavations at Roomburg uncovered the remains of a Roman castellum on the Rhine border, from the early third century AD. Among Celts, Frisians and Romans the higher river ridge of the Old Rhine was one of the few habitable spots in this swampland. In the early Middle Ages, around the ninth and tenth centuries, free farming communities began to reclaim the peat-clay area — the first step toward the polder landscape that still defines the village.

Leiderdorp remained an agricultural village for centuries. Inhabitants lived from farming and cattle, and from the fifteenth century brick-making was added: clay from the Rhine bed was fired in field kilns into bricks. Several brickyards stood along the water, and the bricks were transported to Leiden, Amsterdam and beyond. The photo above shows the Old Rhine at the village — the lifeline that has set the rhythm here since Roman times.

Administratively Leiderdorp had a particular relationship with Leiden: from 1597 to 1795 the city of Leiden held the manorial rights over the village. That long made Leiderdorp dependent on its larger neighbour. In the twentieth century a growth spurt began: both before and after the Second World War many homes were built, first to absorb housing shortages in Leiden, later as regular expansion of the municipality itself.

Today Leiderdorp is a commuter municipality with Leiden a bike ride away and the A4 at the door. Most residents commute, work from home, or run a business in the region. We run set pickup days through the municipality — centre, Binnenhof, Zijlkwartier, De Bloemerd. Your bag goes along in the morning, and comes back in the evening clean and ironed with the same driver. A rhythm that fits a village that has lain on the same river for two thousand years.