Bleaching field & Bleaching house - Winterswijk

Between 1800 and 1940, this was the field where sheets were rinsed and bleached for the four Winterswijk textile factories. It all started with five little sheds by the brook, where the laundry was rinsed in 1830. Fifty years later, the whole field was in use by the companies Meijerink & Co, Meijerink & Son, Poppers and Ten Hagen. Carts full of sheets rolled in over the ‘Bleekdiek’. After being rinsed in the stream, the fabrics were laid out on the grass to bleach in the sun.

In 1884, a shared bleaching house was built for the Meijerink companies, where they mostly bleached denim. The building had two chimneys and an upper floor built in traditional timber-frame style. Downstairs stood the so-called ‘bukepots’: tubs where the textiles were washed several times in hot soap water.

After that, the fabrics were rinsed in the brook under the shelter and laid out on the grass. Several times a day, water was splashed over the sheets with a big wooden ladle — called a ‘geteklomp’ — to keep them wet.

Once they were white enough, they were rinsed one more time and hung up to dry in the attic of the bleaching house. All in all, it could take weeks before a sheet was fully bleached.

In 1933, an outdoor swimming pool was built and the bleaching fields got smaller. In 1976, the municipality took over the bleaching house. Sadly, it collapsed in the 1980s. Today, only the chimneys are still visible.