Oegstgeest is located in one of the earliest inhabited parts of the Holland region. It is known that a church stood here in the 9th century, but it was possibly founded already in the 8th century by Irish missionary Willibrord. Anyway, it was one of the first churches in the Holland region.
By the end of the  Middle Ages the church was a one-aisled cruciform church in Gothic style with a Romanesque tower and a long, straight choir. In 1574, during the Eighty Years War, it was largely destroyed, while the tower was left mostly unharmed. Later, the ruins became protestant property. First, in ca. 1600,  the nave was rebuild, in  1662-1663 followed by  the transept and choir. It  appears that the rebuild church looked a lot like it did before the war, only the windows were now rounded instead of pointed.
Part of the Romanesque tower collapsed in 1824. In 1830 the rest of it was demolished. During a restoration in 1954-1956 a portal was built in its place. In the same period the coat of ivy, to which the church owed its nickname Groene Kerk ('green church'), was removed.