Arsenal is the only Tube station named after a football club, and the roads around it, Gillespie Road, Avenell Road and Aubert Park, are tall Victorian terraces split into flats, with the old Highbury ground now turned into homes. London Carpet Cleaning covers Arsenal, N5 and N7, from £36 a room, and the carpets are dry within 6 to 7 hours.
Victorian terraces round the stadium, flats on the old pitch
Arsenal is an Islington address, the borough’s Arsenal ward, built around two kinds of home. Most of it is late-Victorian and Edwardian terrace: Avenell Road, Sotheby Road, Aubert Park, Gillespie Road and the hill streets climbing towards Highbury Fields. These are solid-wall houses on London clay with suspended timber floors, and the better-kept ones still have their original wool carpet on the stairs. Almost all of them have been carved into flats, so our cleaner usually climbs a shared Victorian staircase before reaching your front door.
The station came before the football. It opened on 15 December 1906 as Gillespie Road, and the club moved to Highbury in 1913. Herbert Chapman, the Arsenal manager, pushed for a new name, and on 31 October 1932 the station became Arsenal (Highbury Hill); the suffix was dropped around 1960, though the old Gillespie Road tiling is still on the platform walls.
The other Arsenal is new. When the club left Highbury for the Emirates in 2006, the old ground on Avenell Road became Highbury Square, 650 flats finished in 2010. The Grade II listed East and West Stands were kept and converted, and the pitch became a communal garden. More recent blocks sit across the railway at Drayton Park. Highbury Fields, the largest open green space in the borough at nearly 30 acres, is a short walk south.
What the Gillespie Road census area shows
| Homes that are | Share |
|---|---|
| Flats in purpose-built blocks | 38.8% |
| Flats in converted houses | 20.5% |
| Terraced houses | 28.8% |
| Rented privately | 34.3% |
| Built before 1900 | 50.9% |
| Built since 2000 | 22.9% |
The ONS names this neighbourhood after Gillespie Road, and it takes in the station, Highbury Square and the terraces in between. Two numbers tell its story. Half the homes (50.9%) date from before 1900, and 22.9% have been built since 2000, which is Highbury Square and the blocks that followed it. In the old stock, the work is stairs and hallways in converted houses (20.5% of homes) and the terraces still kept whole (28.8%). In the new flats it is two or three rooms of pale carpet off a lift.
Ownership sits at 38.3%. Another 34.3% of households rent privately and 26.0% rent from the council or a housing association, so a big share of our Arsenal diary is check-out cleans booked between the inventory clerk and the next tenant’s van. Two-bedroom homes are the most common size, at 31.8%. For a two-bed flat on the first floor of a split terrace, both bedrooms and the living room come to £115. Just 1.9% of homes have no central heating, though 11.0% rely on electric heating alone; in those flats airflow does most of the drying, so open a window for the first hour after we leave.
Figures: ONS Census 2021 (Islington 006) and VOA council tax stock, March 2024.
Parking zones, match days and the school gate
Arsenal straddles two of Islington’s parking zones. Gillespie Road is in the Finsbury Park zone, Zone H, which is controlled from 8.30am to 6.30pm on weekdays and on Saturdays. Avenell Road and the Highbury Square end fall in Zone G, called Gillespie, where the controls run only from 10am to 2pm on weekdays, with none at the weekend unless there is a game. If you have a visitor voucher, one covers the van; if not, we pay for the bay ourselves.
Home matches and big stadium events change everything. Zone H then runs until 8.30pm on weekdays, Zone G from 10am to 8.30pm, and both are controlled from 12 noon to 4.30pm on Sundays and public holidays. The parking bays on Drayton Park between Benwell Road and Bryantwood Road are kept for coaches, and the closure at Ronalds Road and Horsell Road comes back for the day. We check the fixture list before we confirm a date in N5.
Gillespie Primary School is on Gillespie Road itself, so a morning booking on that stretch starts once the school run has cleared. In the converted houses the hose runs from the van, through the front door and up the common stair, and we pad the stair edges as it goes. Move bikes and buggies out of the shared hall, and take shoes and bags off the stairs, and we can start there first while nobody needs them.
Match-night spills, runners and ink by the door
The work here follows the housing. In the period flats it is wool stair runners and hallways that take a hammering, greasy traffic lanes by the front door, and the food and drink that lands on a lounge carpet on a match night. In the new flats it is pale modern carpet in the bedrooms, plus sofas and mattresses that need a freshen up after a year or two of use. Pet odour in a wool rug is a regular call too, usually one a cat has claimed for months.
Ink has limits. Biro that has sat in a carpet or a sofa for a long time has usually dyed the fibre itself. A hot-water extraction clean lifts the loose pigment, yet it cannot always take a set stain back to nothing, so we tell you on the doorstep whether a mark by the front door should go or only fade.
How much does carpet cleaning cost in Arsenal?
Every figure below is fixed before we set off, nothing is added for coming out, and Islington pays the same list as every other borough we cover.
- Carpet cleaning, per bedroom, from £36
- Living room carpet from £43
- Through-lounge from £61
- Stairs, one flight, from £41
- Two-seater sofa from £57; armchair from £33
- Rug up to 3m² from £35
Where a terrace up Highbury Hill is still one house, three bedrooms with the living room and one flight of stairs is £192. Get a free quote, or call us on 020 8077 8090.
One van for runners, sofas and rugs
Our hot-water carpet cleaning suits the wool runners in the terraces and the synthetic carpet in the stadium flats alike, and it is what lifts a match-day spill out of a lounge. For tired sofas and leather three-seaters we offer upholstery and leather cleaning that cleans and conditions in one visit. Wool and delicate floor rugs get proper rug cleaning and odour treatment in the home. We cover the rest of Islington too, and neighbouring Holloway and Nag’s Head are on the same round.
Arsenal bookings: what people ask us
Which postcodes and streets around Arsenal do you cover?
We cover the whole Arsenal and Highbury patch across N5, N7 and the N4 edge by Blackstock Road and Finsbury Park. That takes in Gillespie Road, Avenell Road, Aubert Park, Highbury Hill, Drayton Park, St Thomas’s Road and the Highbury Square flats. If you are unsure your road counts, send the postcode and we will confirm by return.
Can you still come when Arsenal are playing at home?
We avoid booking the Arsenal streets for match days, because the longer parking controls, the coach bays on Drayton Park and the road closures around the Emirates make loading the van a nightmare. Tell us the date you want and we will either dodge a fixture or pick a morning slot well before any crowd builds on Gillespie Road.
Do you clean the carpets in the Highbury Square and Drayton Park apartments?
Often, yes. The new-build flats around the old ground tend to have pale, low-pile carpet in the bedrooms and hall that marks easily. We use a controlled amount of water so it dries quickly in a flat with limited airflow, and we are used to fobbed entrances, lifts and underground parking, so booking a concierge slot is no trouble.
How long will the carpet take to dry afterwards?
Most carpets are dry within 6 to 7 hours and fully dry within the day. Wool runners in the period houses hold a little more moisture, so in a ground-floor or basement flat with less air movement we allow longer and suggest cracking a window. We give you a realistic time for your room before we pack up.
Can your van get through the Highbury low-traffic filters?
Yes, we plan the route round them. The Highbury scheme has traffic filters, including one at Aubert Park, so some roads can only be reached from one end. Give us your street when you book and we work out the way in beforehand. On match days the Aubert Park and Highbury Place filters are suspended for residents, but the parking controls run longer then, so we still keep clear of those dates.
I’m handing back a rented flat near the stadium. Can you fit in before the check-out?
Usually, yes. A third of homes here are rented privately, so check-out cleans are a big part of our week in N5 and N7. Tell us the inventory date and we book the clean a day or two before it. You get a dated receipt for the deposit, and a clean the day before gives the carpet its 6 to 7 hours and leaves it dry well before the clerk arrives.
Every clean comes with our re-clean guarantee: if a treated area does not come up as agreed, we come back and put it right at no charge. We are fully insured, our cleaners are DBS-checked, and we have cleaned carpets, sofas and rugs across Islington since 2009.
