Gold Mine (1862-1968) - Grotestraat 231
In 1862, bricklayer Adrianus van Rooij built eleven workers' dwellings in his garden; these dwellings were called "Gold Mine. Van Rooij had lived in Australia and had made a good living there. This money he invested in workers' houses, the proceeds of the rent was called a gold mine'. This dam was the first to be called a 'mine'. A 'dam' is the connecting road from the public road to the back part of the plot. Since then, other rows of dam houses also received the typical Waalwijk designation 'mine'. In 1885, the east side of the dam was built on. A large number of home-working shoemakers lived in the 'Gold Mine'.
The western part then consisted of nine houses built together with on the side of the Winterdijk two dike houses, built at right angles to that row. Those last two cottages had their doors on the Winterdijk side. The men seated at the low tables are shoemakers, who left their dark workshop in good weather to work outside.
World chronicle
In the fall of 1905, a reporter and photographer visited the 'Gold Mine'. The report was published in 'De Wereldkroniek: illustrated newspaper for everyone', of October 7, 1905. 'We go into such a neighborhood where work chairs are outside. There they flick, choke and hammer and you see them rubbing their roefel-kai and bol-licker like crazy. Here are small houses braced together under a large roof, with narrow rooms, sparsely furnished, untidy here and clean there, bedsteads against the wall, the flowered cover taken up, the floor sprinkled with white sand, a white polished or strongly rusted flat stove in the middle. You smell, though the wind howls freely down the alley, a peculiar air of leather and pitch and 'the burning of scraps (leather).'
Okke the spider
A striking resident and local celebrity was shoemaker Okke 'the spider' van Delft, who had a candy store there. His assortment consisted of 'lucky charms', magic balls and licorice. An old townsman described his memories of Okke: 'The Marktstraatje, the Goudmijn and the Poststraat were the gateways to all that wide glory of the polders and at Okke's we bought magic balls for a penny.' Okke placed a New Year's message in the Echo of the South year after year. He was known as a joker first class. In 1935 he had the following ad placed: 'OKKE hopes to take to the skies this year with his biplane and with his orchestra and then he plays t is so nice to be in those 'drop fields'. Then we return to Holland again.' The west side was demolished in 1912, between 1965-1968 the east side and the three rear hovels were torn down for the construction of a telephone exchange.