Laundry & ironing service in Wateringen

Wateringen has a history that wouldn't be out of place in a knight's tale. Around 1250 Gerard van der Wateringhe built a castle here — the Hof van Wateringen — owned for two centuries by first the Van der Wateringhe family, later the Van Egmonds, and ultimately the Lords of Naaldwijk. In 1485 Hendrik IV of Naaldwijk donated the castle to the Cistercians of the Sint-Salvator monastery in Antwerp, who turned it into a monastery and gave it the name Holy Mary in Bethlehem.

That monastery did not last long. In 1572 the Watergeuzen attacked Den Briel and abducted the priest and chaplain of Monster. The monks at Wateringen left their monastery hastily. A year later it was probably set on fire — in connection with the siege of Leiden. After the Revolt, what remained was sold in 1575 for one hundred pounds to a Delft stonemason. Around 1600 the Hof came into the hands of the Van der Dussen family from Delft, who built a new country estate on it.

Meanwhile the village had its own life. The church on the Plein, whose tower was built around 1350, still stands — alongside a thirteenth-century chapel that was replaced around 1450 by a new church. Horticulture came late: along with Poeldijk and Monster, Wateringen was one of the centres where the first Westland glass cultivation arose, as early as the nineteenth century. The photo above, of a characteristic building on the Hoflaan, shows the scale at which Wateringen has always remained: village-like and yet with history.

Living in Wateringen, you commute or work in the Westland. The village is small and compact; the laundry is no less. We run set pickup days through Wateringen — the centre, Erasmuspark, De Ark and Juliahof. Your bag is ready in the morning, and comes back in the evening clean, ironed and neatly folded with the same driver. The same rhythm every week, in the village that has lived on craft and a mind of its own for eight centuries.