In July 1725 a Wapping pump maker named Daniel Day started a fair under the great Fairlop Oak, and at its peak it drew crowds of two or three hundred thousand. The oak was gone by 1820; the plain became an airfield and then the lakes of Fairlop Waters. London Carpet Cleaning covers Fairlop, IG6, with rooms from £36 and carpets dry within 6 to 7 hours.
An oak, a fair and a Spitfire field
Fairlop’s name goes back at least to 1738, when the giant tree was recorded as the “Fair Lop Tree”. Day’s fair grew so big that it outlived the oak by most of a century, and its last big gathering was in 1900. The forest around it had been cleared by then, after the 1851 enclosure act. The railway came in 1903, when the Great Eastern opened Fairlop station on the Hainault loop, and it became part of the Central line in 1948. Fairlop sits in zone 4, between Barkingside and Hainault.
The flat ground north of the station had a second life in the air. RAF Fairlop opened in September 1941, when No. 603 Squadron arrived with Spitfires, and it had three concrete runways laid out in an “A”. From June 1944 it became a barrage balloon centre staffed by the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, and the station closed in August 1946. A plan to make it London’s main continental airport came to nothing. The gravel diggers moved in, and the pits became Fairlop Waters, now a country park with sailing and golf; a memorial sculpture to the airfield went up there in November 2013.
The housing is mostly interwar suburban: bay-fronted semis and short terraces on roads such as Colvin Gardens and the streets off Forest Road, with deep hall, stairs and landing runs and lounges that open to a dining end. Towards Hainault the London County Council estate begins, and newer homes have filled gaps since.
Fairlop in census figures
| Homes that are | Share |
|---|---|
| Terraced houses | 33.9% |
| Detached houses | 8.8% |
| Three-bedroom homes | 42.9% |
| Rented privately | 27.5% |
| Built 1919 to 1944 | 44.3% |
| Built in 2000 or later | 20.0% |
The figures fit the streets. 44.3% of homes are interwar, three bedrooms is the usual size (42.9%), and terraces (33.9%) slightly outnumber semis. Detached houses are rarer at 8.8%, though that is still more than in most of Redbridge. The typical booking is the whole upstairs, the stairs and the through-lounge: for a three-bed semi off Forest Road, that comes to £210.
Two figures are higher than the age of the streets suggests. 20.0% of homes were built in 2000 or later, the newer flats and closes, and 27.5% are rented privately, well above the Hainault estate next door. That puts end-of-tenancy work high on the list here. Mains gas heats most homes, so a carpet cleaned in the morning dries by the afternoon with the radiators on low.
Figures: ONS Census 2021 (Redbridge 006) and VOA council tax stock, March 2024.
Muddy paws, set-in marks and rented flats
The jobs here are family jobs. Trodden-in food and felt tip on the stairs, kids’ marks along a sofa arm, traffic lanes worn grey down a hallway, and a steady run of pet odour in rugs from homes that back onto green space. Walk the dog round the lake or the boulder park at Fairlop Waters and the mud comes home with you, dried into the hall carpet and the bottom of the stairs. Wool rugs from front rooms often carry a pet smell the owner has scrubbed at for weeks; we pre-treat those on your floor and rinse them through, and the smell lifts.
End-of-tenancy cleans are common, and a clean set of carpets is usually what gets a deposit signed off without argument. A felt-tip or biro line soaked into a light stair carpet usually lifts most of the way but can leave a faint ghost, and we say so before we begin.
How much does carpet cleaning cost in Fairlop?
You pay the fixed figure we quote, never a call-out fee, and the rates match the rest of Redbridge and London.
- Carpet cleaning per bedroom from £36
- Living room 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.
Cleaning methods we use in Fairlop
For fitted carpets we use hot-water extraction, a deep steam clean that flushes out grit and lifts the worn lanes. Fabric and leather suites go through our sofa and upholstery cleaning, the right call for a cream two-seater with a wine mark in the middle cushion or a leather arm gone grubby from small hands. Loose rugs, especially the wool ones that hold odour, go through our specialist rug cleaning in your home. We cover the rest of Redbridge at the same prices, including next-door Fullwell Cross and Barkingside.
On the day, most Fairlop semis have a driveway or hardstanding, so the van pulls onto it or parks at the kerb close by; check the signs if you live near the station or the park entrance on Station Road. The machine runs from the van, so we need only a hose run to the door. Clear the stairs and the hall floor, and put the dog in the garden while the carpets dry.
Fairlop questions
Do you cover all of Fairlop, including the streets by Fairlop Waters?
Yes, the whole of IG6 around the station, from Hainault Road and the roads off Forest Road across to the Manford Way side. We also cover the streets that edge Fairlop Waters and the golf course, and we carry on into Hainault and Barkingside with no change to the price.
Where do you park when you come to clean?
Usually on your drive or the hardstanding out front, or on the kerb close by. Our machine runs from the van and we only need a hose run to the door, so a space within a reasonable distance of the house is all it takes. Near the station, tell us if the road has bays.
I walk the dog at Fairlop Waters. Can you get the mud out?
That is one of the most common jobs we get here. Mud from the lake path or the boulder park dries into hall carpets and the bottom of the stairs. Hot-water extraction lifts dried mud and the grit beneath it far better than a surface clean, and the carpet is dry within 6 to 7 hours, so nobody is stepping round it.
How long do carpets take to dry after an end-of-tenancy clean in Fairlop?
Most carpets dry within 6 to 7 hours, and a thick wool or a heavily soiled stair run in one of the 1930s semis can take a little longer. For an end-of-tenancy clean, leave a window open and hold off moving the last boxes in, so the pile dries fully before furniture goes back on it.
I am a landlord with a let near the station. Can you clean between tenants with nobody home?
Yes. With 27.5% of homes here let privately, it is a regular booking. Leave a key with the agent or in a key safe, tell us the rooms, and we send a dated invoice for the inventory file. Book after the outgoing tenant has gone and before the new one moves in.
Can you clean a carpet that a sofa or bed has sat on for years?
Yes, and those patches often look newest in the room, since nobody has walked on them. What shows is the dent. We clean the whole carpet, then lift the crushed pile with a brush while it is damp; most dents ease over a day or two, though deep ones from a heavy bed can stay a little lower than the rest.
Our re-clean guarantee applies to every Fairlop clean: should a spot come back as the pile dries, so do we, at no charge. Every cleaner is insured and DBS-checked, and Redbridge families have booked us since 2009.
