Kitty's Launderette

Kitty Wilkinson was an Irish immigrant to Liverpool who, during the cholera epidemic of 1832, opened her home to neighbours so they could wash their clothes and bedding. She understood that clean linen was a matter of survival. She lobbied Liverpool council for a decade. In 1842, the first public washhouse in the UK opened on Upper Frederick Street. She became known as the Saint of the Slums.

Kitty’s Launderette opened in May 2019 in Anfield, Liverpool - the first community washhouse to open in the city in several decades. The name is a lineage claim. The impulse is the same: clean clothes, warm space, dignity, somewhere to be.

The project emerged from three years of community consultation led by Grace Harrison, a young artist and co-operative founder who maintained a cleaning job through the development years and lived as cheaply as possible to get it off the ground. She is open about what that kind of sweat equity requires - and about the fact that most young people cannot afford it. A Kickstarter campaign, community fundraising, and Big Lottery funding through Power to Change enabled the transformation of a disused builder’s yard into something that now has a life of its own.

The Model

Kitty’s is a workers’ community co-operative. Nine staff, all local people, all co-operative members. The structure is flat - all work is valued equally, all workers paid the same hourly wage, the Real Living Wage. Nobody manages anybody else in the traditional sense. The model was chosen deliberately: to reflect the needs of both workers and the wider community, rather than extracting value from either.

The launderette runs affordable, eco-friendly washing and drying services. All machines are electric, powered by 100% renewable electricity. But the laundry is almost beside the point. The space has tea and coffee, free Wi-Fi, computer access, a community notice board. Film screenings are timed to last exactly as long as a wash and dry cycle. There are story-telling sessions for children, quiz nights, live music, knitting groups, language clubs, social history projects. It is warm and open and free to walk into.

Commercial income - contracts with hotels, bed and breakfasts, and local football clubs, plus ecological dry cleaning via the WetCare system - cross-subsidises the community work. A voucher scheme, run in partnership with Shelter, Whitechapel Centre, and local children’s centres, gives people in crisis access to the machines at no cost. An independent Social Impact Report in 2024 found that for every £1 invested in Kitty’s, £43 of social value is generated for the community.

In 2023, Kitty’s won the Community-Based Social Enterprise Award from Social Enterprise UK.

What It Is

In 2025, Kitty’s launched a crowdfunder to buy an electric delivery van and install solar panels - to reach more of the city and cut costs further. The expansion is an extension of the founding logic: local money stays local, young people are trusted to build their own economy, basic infrastructure is not a luxury.

The washhouse movement Kitty Wilkinson started in 1842 lasted over a century before it was dismantled. What Kitty’s Launderette is trying to work out is what it looks like now - not as nostalgia, but as urgent contemporary answer to the same persistent problem.

Further reading

kittyslaunderette.org.uk - Kitty’s Launderette website

Power to Change case study - funded the original project

Social Enterprise UK - Community-Based Social Enterprise Award 2023 and expansion crowdfunder

Stir to Action - profile and replication discussion

Miele case study - on the founding and model

Instagram: @kittyslaundry

Facebook: Kitty’s Launderette

Address: 77 Grasmere Street, Anfield, Liverpool, L5 6RH