Children used to be kept in this monumental building

In the Dorpsstraat, number 35 is a monumental building from 1928 that now serves as a restaurant. In the past, this building had a very different function: it was a so -called storage school. What was saved there?

Small children. Don’t be afraid, no scary or criminal practices, but it was a kind of kindergarten for young Catholic children.

A piece of history

For centuries it was the churches that teached children. First only to boys, later also to girls. Education was especially available for children from richer families. In poorer families, the children simply cooperated at home, for example on the land.

That simply yielded more than the children were in school all day and a learning law for toddlers did not yet exist. At one point it became clear that a very big knowledge gap arose between rich and poor. Education became available for all layers of the population. Paid for the rich, free for the poorer families.

Precursor of kindergarten

Instead of staying at home, children aged about 3 to 6 years were stored, or housed, in a storage school. They learned and played there with other children. This was the precursor of the current kindergarten, but also of a daycare center. Especially the children from richer families were taken care of here when the parents started working. The school was later named Het Kwetternest. In 1936, Zoetermeer also received a Christian storage school in the Dorpsstraat.

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Other destinations

In 1974 the Zoetermeerse family Ribberink bought the building at Dorpsstraat 35 and started a bookstore there. Shortly after the year 2000 the former school changed to a cooking studio and later in restaurant Taste and Entertainment.

Source: The scent of chalk. School buildings in ZoetermeerVan R.Grootveld, B. Koopmans, P. Rooijen, HGOS