Most of Albert Street was built between 1844 and 1848 by George Bassett, surveyor to the Southampton Estate: brick and stucco terraces of three storeys over basements, behind front gardens up to five metres deep. A good many are still family houses, while the streets nearer the market are split into flats above and below. London Carpet Cleaning has worked Camden Town, NW1, since 2009. The price is from £36 a room, fixed before we start, and carpets are dry within 6 to 7 hours.
Two landowners and a canal
Camden Town began as a stopping place at a fork in the road out of London. Building is recorded at the fork as far back as 1690, where the road split towards Hampstead and Highgate, and a tavern stood where the World’s End pub is now. Late in the eighteenth century two landowners began selling building leases, Charles Pratt, Earl Camden, east of the present High Street and Charles Fitzroy, Lord Southampton, to the west, and many of the street names still come from those two families. The Regent’s Canal opened for business in 1820, but Arlington Road, Albert Street, Mornington Terrace and Delancey Street stayed empty plots until the railways arrived in the 1830s.
The residential grid west of the High Street went up in three decades, between 1820 and 1850. Arlington Road has the smaller houses, three storeys on basements from the 1820s to about 1840; Albert Street is wider, with Bassett’s terraces and cast-iron balconies on the first floors. Charles Dickens lived on Bayham Street as a boy, and east of the High Street humble terraces from Lord Camden’s development survive, many in multiple occupation since the 1860s. Camden designated the Camden Town Conservation Area on 11 November 1986 and extended it in 1997, and the Jeffrey’s Street Conservation Area covers a pocket further east.
The Second World War left gaps. Ruscombe, a council block of 1960, stands on the site of a bombed chapel at the corner of Delancey Street, and the 1950s Three Fields Estate (Fairfield, Foxfield and Brierfield) sits in a patch of landscaping between Mary Terrace and Miller Street. Camden Town station, built in 1907 to Leslie Green’s design, was bomb-damaged and repaired; it is now the busy Northern line junction where the Edgware and High Barnet branches meet. The Inverness Street fruit and vegetable market dates from 1901, and the Roundhouse, an 1847 engine shed, is a short walk up Chalk Farm Road.
Renting and one-bed flats
| Homes that are | Share |
|---|---|
| Rented privately | 43.4% |
| Flats in converted houses | 22.6% |
| Flats over shops or in other converted buildings | 9.2% |
| One-bedroom homes | 39.5% |
| Built before 1900 | 50.9% |
| Built since 2000 | 20.1% |
The census area that covers the High Street is the one the ONS calls Camden Town & Mornington Crescent, in Camden Town ward, and it fits Camden Town closely. The biggest single fact is renting: 43.4% of homes are let privately, the highest share of any tenure here, so a lot of our calls come from tenants and landlords working to a check-out date. One-bedroom homes are the largest group, at 39.5%. A one-bedroom flat with its living room costs £79.
Half the homes (50.9%) are older than 1900, and the way they are divided shows in the next two rows: 22.6% are flats carved out of houses and another 9.2% are flats over shops or in other converted buildings, the High Street type with a street door beside the shopfront. At the other end, 20.1% of homes have been built since 2000, mostly with synthetic carpet that shows traffic lanes early. One home in five (20.0%) heats with electricity alone, and in those flats a carpet dries more slowly when the heating is off, so we leave a window open and an air mover running.
Figures: ONS Census 2021 (Camden 021) and VOA council tax stock, March 2024.
Parking either side of Delancey Street
All of Camden Town is in Camden’s CA-F controlled parking zone, but the hours depend on which side of the town you are on. Around the market, on Delancey Street, Inverness Street and the streets north of them, the CA-F(n) sub-zone is controlled from 8.30am to 11pm on weekdays and 9.30am to 11pm at weekends, with resident bays in force all day on Saturdays and Sundays. South of that, on most of Albert Street, Arlington Road and Bayham Street, CA-F(s) runs from 8.30am to 6.30pm on weekdays and 9.30am to 5.30pm on Saturdays, with residents’ bays also controlled on Sunday daytimes. We pay for a bay by phone in either, at no cost to you.
The main roads through the town are TfL red routes, Camden Road among them, so we never unload on them. Market weekends bring the heaviest crowds on the High Street, and weekday mornings are when we get closest to the door. In the terraces the hose goes up the front steps or down into the basement area behind the railings; tell us which floor is yours and clear the hall before we come.
Party stains and deposit cleans
The flats here see hard wear in small spaces. We get a lot of red wine and party stains in front rooms, ground-in food on fabric settees where children eat in the same room they play, and tired leather sofas that have gone dull and grimy and need cleaning and then feeding. End-of-tenancy carpet cleans are constant, because Camden landlords inspect closely before releasing a deposit. Mattresses come up often too, usually after a child has been ill, and they sanitise and dry back clean with no lingering smell.
Candle wax and dye spills on rugs, common after a birthday dinner, lift almost entirely, but a faint colour shadow can stay where the dye has already set into pale wool fibres. We tell you on sight whether yours will clear or only fade.
How much does carpet cleaning cost in Camden Town?
The figures below are fixed, carry no call-out fee and match the rest of Camden and every London borough, so nothing changes once the van arrives.
- Carpet, per bedroom, from £36
- Living room, from £43
- Through-lounge, from £61
- Stairs, one flight, from £41
- Two-seater sofa, from £57; mattress from £35
- Rug up to 3m², from £35
Get a free quote, or call us on 020 8077 8090.
Extraction for period wool and rugs
Our hot-water-extraction steam carpet cleaning suits the period wool and the newer flat carpets here, lifting traffic lanes without soaking the boards beneath. For fabric and leather settees we offer upholstery cleaning matched to the fabric, including the clean-and-feed that brings dull leather back. Wax-spilled and stained rugs get rug cleaning in your home, with the wax lifted and the mark pre-treated before the wash. We cover the rest of Camden too, and further north-west we reach Golders Green and Temple Fortune.
What Camden Town asks us
Do you cover all of NW1 and the streets around the market?
Yes. We work the whole of Camden Town and NW1, from Bayham Street, Pratt Street and Delancey Street near the High Street out to Camden Square and the Camden Road end. Whether you are in a canal-side maisonette or a flat above the shops, give us the postcode and we will book you a slot.
How do you park near Camden High Street and the canal?
Camden Town sits in the CA-F controlled parking zone, and controls in the CA-F(n) sub-zone run into the late evening, weekends included. We carry portable kit and load from the nearest legal bay, paying by phone, so heavy market-day traffic and tight streets are no problem. Just let us know the access and any permit details when you book.
Can you clean a stair carpet on a top-floor conversion?
Yes. Three flights up to a roof conversion is normal here. Our machines are portable and we run hoses up through the stairwell, so you do not need ground-floor access or a parking space outside the door. We charge stairs by the flight, so a single run is from £41 whatever floor it climbs to.
How long do carpets take to dry in a Camden Town period flat?
Most carpets are dry within 6 to 7 hours, a little longer for dense period wool or a ground-floor flat with less airflow, such as a garden maisonette off Albert Street. We extract hard on the final passes to pull out as much moisture as possible, so you are walking on it the same day, with no wait overnight.
Our Albert Street house is still one home. How do you price it?
By the rooms and the flights. These houses are three storeys over a basement, so a whole-house clean usually means three flights of stairs, each from £41, plus the bedrooms and the reception rooms. The stairs and the first-floor landing take the most wear, and we give them the most time.
Do you clean flats on the Three Fields Estate?
Yes. Fairfield, Foxfield and Brierfield are 1950s council blocks off Mary Terrace and Miller Street, and a typical booking there is a bedroom or two, a living room and the hall. Tell us the block and floor when you book. We park in a paid bay on Mary Terrace or Miller Street, both in CA-F, and bring the kit up to your door.
Every clean in Camden Town is backed by our re-clean guarantee: if a spot lifts and then returns, so do we, at no charge. We are fully insured and DBS-checked, and we have cleaned carpets, sofas and rugs across these streets since 2009.
