Barkingside was the Barking side of Hainault Forest, and Chapman and André’s map of 1777 shows it as a strip of common at the forest’s western edge. Its station, opened in 1903 with a cupola and a hammerbeam roof, is Grade II listed, and the streets around it are mostly 1920s and 1930s semis and long terraces. London Carpet Cleaning covers Barkingside, IG6, from £36 a room; once cleaned, carpets are dry within 6 to 7 hours.
From forest common to interwar suburb
The name marks an old boundary. Barkingside sat just inside the manor and parish of Barking, whose line ran through the forest, and until 1965 it belonged to the Municipal Borough of Ilford in Essex. Holy Trinity Church, from 1840, is one of the oldest buildings left. The children’s charity Barnardo’s still has its headquarters here, and Redbridge protects the old Barnardo’s Village Homes as a conservation area.
The Great Eastern Railway opened the station on 1 May 1903 on its Fairlop loop, a brick building probably designed under its architect W. N. Ashbee, with a hammerbeam roof in the ticket hall and platform canopies still carrying the company’s insignia. It was listed Grade II in 1979. Electric Central line trains took over on 31 May 1948, and the station sits in zone 4 between Newbury Park and Fairlop.
The houses came between those two dates. The bay-fronted semi and the long terrace fill Mossford Lane, Fencepiece Road and the roads off Horns Road, generous family houses with a hallway, three bedrooms upstairs and a flight of stairs that takes a beating. North of the High Street, around Fremantle Road and Looe Gardens towards Clayhall Avenue, it is more of the same, with newer flats near the station and the shops.
Barkingside’s homes, in figures
| Homes that are | Share |
|---|---|
| Semi-detached houses | 32.7% |
| Terraced houses | 29.4% |
| Three-bedroom homes | 35.8% |
| Homes with four or more bedrooms | 22.7% |
| Owned outright, no mortgage | 27.0% |
| Built in 2000 or later | 10.2% |
Semis (32.7%) and terraces (29.4%) are close to level here, and between them they make up most of the housing. Three bedrooms is the common size at 35.8%, but more than a fifth of homes (22.7%) have four or more, often where a loft or a back extension has been added. Take a three-bed semi off Mossford Lane: bedrooms, through-lounge and staircase together are £210.
The owners have been here a while: 27.0% own outright. Many of those houses kept their original wool or wool-blend carpet on the stairs, which cleans up well but holds water, so we extract hard and groom the pile so it dries evenly. Newer homes are a smaller slice, 10.2% built since 2000, much of it flats, where the carpet is younger synthetic.
Figures: ONS Census 2021 (Redbridge 010) and VOA council tax stock, March 2024.
Bedrooms, stairs and takeaway spills
This is family territory, and the carpets show it. The jobs that fill the diary are children’s bedrooms with set-in juice and felt tip, busy stairs and landings worn to a shine, mattresses freshened after a winter of colds, and the odd takeaway accident on a fabric sofa. Where a beige or pale stair carpet has had years of foot traffic ground into a grey lane, a deep clean lifts it a long way and brings the colour back, but a shadow that has been walking into the fibre for a decade will not always come out. We tell you on the doorstep what is dirt and what is wear before we start.
The core of the work is hot-water extraction carpet cleaning, which suits the wool and synthetic carpets common in these 1930s houses. We also handle sofa and upholstery cleaning for the fabric three-seaters that take the brunt of family life, and specialist rug cleaning done in the home, with a photo first where a rug is delicate. Outside IG6, the rest of Redbridge gets the same list, and our vans are in Fullwell Cross and Fairlop most weeks.
How much does carpet cleaning cost in Barkingside?
The quote you get is the bill you pay, there is no call-out charge, and Barkingside prices are the same as anywhere else in Redbridge or London.
- 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; mattress from £35
Get a free quote, or call us on 020 8077 8090.
Getting the van close to the house
Most Barkingside houses have their own driveway or off-street space, so we can usually pull up at the front door. Near the station and the High Street it is tighter, and the council car park on Craven Gardens is open Monday to Saturday, 6.30am to 6.30pm, if we need it. We carry long hoses and can run from a side road. On the day, clear toys and shoes from the stairs and the landing, and take anything breakable off the floor in the bedrooms.
Barkingside questions
Which parts of Barkingside do you cover, from Tomswood Hill to Mossford Lane?
All of IG6, from the houses around Tomswood Hill and Forest Road near Fairlop Waters, down to the flats and shops along the High Street, and across to Mossford Lane, Fencepiece Road and Cranston Gardens. We also reach the neighbouring streets in Fullwell Cross and Fairlop, so a home on the edge of the postcode is no problem to fit in.
Is van parking a problem near Barkingside station and the High Street?
Rarely on the residential roads, where most houses have a drive. Near the station and the High Street, check the signs for bays and loading limits; we run the hose from a side road or use the Craven Gardens car park.
Can you do an end-of-tenancy clean before my final inspection?
Yes, and a fair share of our IG6 work is exactly that. We clean carpets to the standard letting agents and landlords expect for a deposit return, and we work to your check-out date and time slot. Many of the flats here are two-bed lets, and we can turn a whole flat round in a single visit.
How long will carpets take to dry in a Barkingside semi?
Usually 6 to 7 hours for an ordinary lounge or bedroom, longer for a dense wool carpet or a damp ground floor in winter. Well-trodden interwar stairs can hold moisture at the edges, so we leave them slightly tacky, never soaked, and suggest you keep to the centre for the evening.
Can you get juice and felt tip out of a child’s bedroom carpet?
Most of the time. Fruit juice and squash leave a sugary dye that we pre-treat before extraction, and washable felt tip comes out well. Permanent marker and old blackcurrant stains on a pale carpet usually fade a long way without vanishing, and we test a corner first.
Should we clean the carpets before or after decorating?
After. Sanding, filling and painting send dust onto every floor, and a carpet cleaned first will need doing again. Book us once the decorators have packed up and the dust sheets have gone, and tell us about any paint spots so we can deal with them while they are fresh.
Should a mark come back once the carpet is dry, the re-clean guarantee means a free return visit. Insurance and DBS checks are in place, and Barkingside has been on our books since 2009.
