Laundry & ironing service in Oegstgeest

Oegstgeest is one of the oldest settlements in Holland. As early as the second century AD an indigenous community lived here along the Old Rhine, with sixty to eighty inhabitants who continually fought the rising water. Archaeological research has shown that this village was, in the early Middle Ages (550–725), a trading post connected to all of Europe: shards from England, Germany and southern France still lie in Oegstgeest soil.

According to tradition, around 740 Willibrord — the Anglo-Saxon missionary who spread Christianity in Holland between 690 and 739 — built a wooden church here on the remains of a Roman settlement. That church was destroyed by the Vikings in 856, but on the same spot the Groene Kerkje stands today — the photo above shows that building, the oldest visible heritage of the municipality. The stone church is the legal successor of Willibrord's wooden one and is still in use today.

In the fourteenth century Oegstgeest was overshadowed by rapidly growing Leiden. People moved away, and in 1399 Oegstgeest had to be administratively merged with Poelgeest. By 1525 only about 200 people lived here. Only with the construction of the Amsterdam–The Hague railway and later the Royal Marechaussee barracks did Oegstgeest again become a place where it was good to live — with stately country houses along the Rhine and later neat commuter neighbourhoods.

Today Oegstgeest is a spacious, green municipality at the edge of Leiden. Highly educated commuters, families with children at international schools, researchers from the Bio Science Park — all on the same square kilometre. We run set pickup days through the municipality — centre, Poelgeest, Haaswijk, Rhijngeest. Your bag goes along in the morning, and comes back in the evening clean and ironed with the same driver. A daily rhythm, in a village that has existed for more than 1,200 years.