Belgrave Place, a tall red-brick Georgian terrace of 1737, still stands on Rectory Lane in Foots Cray, DA14, a short walk from the Seven Stars and the little bridge over the River Cray. London Carpet Cleaning has worked the village since 2009, from the old core to the post-war streets and interwar semis around it. Carpets are dry within 6 to 7 hours, with prices from £36 a room.
A coaching village on the Maidstone road
Foots Cray is the village Sidcup grew out of. Bexley made the old core a conservation area in April 1998, and the appraisal behind it describes two halves: Rectory Lane, which keeps the village houses, and the High Street, which carries the shops. The Seven Stars, a Grade II listed pub with a weatherboarded wing from the 16th century, stands on the north side of the High Street with its garden running down to the river. All Saints church has stood beside the Cray off Rectory Lane since the 1330s.
Rectory Lane holds some of the best Georgian houses in the borough. Belgrave Place (Nos 180 to 188) is the tall terrace of 1737, The Old House at No 170 is a low Georgian house listed Grade II, and Tudor Cottages, a timber-framed building from the late 15th or early 16th century, are among the oldest buildings in Foots Cray. Around that core the housing is a mix: Victorian terraces on streets like Suffolk Road, interwar semis along Cray Road, Rectory Lane and Foots Cray Lane, and flats above the High Street shops.
The village has no station of its own. Sidcup and Albany Park both sit on the Dartford loop line, with Southeastern trains into Charing Cross and Cannon Street, and each is a fair walk uphill. The other reason Foots Cray kept its scale is Foots Cray Meadows, 97 hectares of riverside parkland laid out over the grounds of Foots Cray Place, the Palladian mansion that burnt down in 1949. The Five Arches bridge there went up in brick in the late 1770s and early 1780s, during Capability Brown’s work on the grounds, and the London LOOP walking route crosses the meadows. On the edge of the village, the Coca-Cola plant has bottled drinks since 1961.
Foots Cray homes by the numbers
| Share of homes | Per cent |
|---|---|
| Semi-detached houses | 35.2% |
| Purpose-built flats | 33.3% |
| Terraced houses | 21.1% |
| Three bedrooms | 41.2% |
| Rented from the council or a housing association | 32.2% |
| Built 1945 to 1972 | 52.3% |
The census has no area called Foots Cray; its nearest neighbourhood is named after the meadows and covers the old core plus the newer streets around the park. The Georgian terrace and the cottages are a small part of that picture: only 5.2% of homes were built before 1919. More than half (52.3%) date from 1945 to 1972, another 20.6% from between the wars, and close to a third of households (32.2%) rent from the council or a housing association.
For a carpet clean that means houses with stairs. Six homes in ten are houses, the semi is the most common type, and 41.2% of homes have three bedrooms, so a typical booking here is bedrooms, a lounge and a flight of stairs. A three-bed semi with a through-lounge and one flight of stairs comes to £210. In the purpose-built flats (33.3%) the job is smaller, usually two rooms and a hall, and the lift or the communal stair decides how we carry the kit in. Only 1.9% of homes have no central heating, so with the heating on low a carpet dries on time even in a wet February.
Figures: ONS Census 2021 (Bexley 028) and VOA council tax stock, March 2024.
Grey stairs, worn suites and Cray silt
The work here is family work. Stairs and landings in the terraces and semis go grey down the centre long before the bedrooms need doing, so we clean plenty of staircases on their own. Lounge and dining-room carpets in the semis, plus three-piece suites that have absorbed years of dogs and grandchildren, make up most of the rest.
The meadows drive a lot of it. Households that walk dogs over Five Arches in a wet January bring the river valley home with them, and that fine Cray silt works deep into hall runners and back-room carpets, where only hot-water extraction shifts it. One thing we say plainly at the door: where a stair carpet has worn flat along the tread edges, cleaning takes the grey out and evens the colour, but it cannot rebuild pile that has been crushed or ground away. On a staircase that has served a house for decades, expect clean and cared for, not new.
Parking, the junction and getting in
Bexley’s published list of controlled parking zones takes in no street in old Foots Cray. The Sidcup Town Centre zone only reaches the top of Sidcup Hill (Nos 25 to 45 and 2 to 10) and the Sidcup end of Rectory Lane, between Sidcup High Street and Cross Road, and part of Foots Cray Lane (Nos 57 to 87) sits in the Albany Park Station zone. If your house falls inside one of those stretches, a Bexley visitor scratch card covers the van for the controlled hours.
The traffic is the bigger factor. The conservation appraisal calls the volume of traffic through the village intrusive at peak times, and the junction of Sidcup Hill, Rectory Lane and Cray Road is the busiest point. Rectory Lane itself is narrow in places. Most semis have a drive we can pull onto; for cottages and flats that open straight onto the High Street we park in the nearest side turning and run the hose in. A mid-morning start misses the worst of the rush on the A211 and the A20. Before we arrive, lift shoes and bags off the stairs and clear the floor under beds and the sideboard, and the clean starts straight away.
How much does carpet cleaning cost in Foots Cray?
Prices are fixed, there is no call-out fee, and the rate is the same across Bexley and every London borough.
- Carpet cleaning from £36 per bedroom
- 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
A two-bed flat with a living room comes to £115. Get a free quote, or call us on 020 8077 8090 and we will fix a date.
Stairs, suites and wool rugs
Most bookings here are steam carpet cleaning, which lifts river grit out of the base of the pile. We also handle sofa and upholstery cleaning, in demand for the suites in the older houses, and rug cleaning in the home for the wool rugs that soften floorboards in the period cottages, done right there on the boards. We are over the meadows in North Cray most weeks, and we cover the rest of Bexley from Sidcup up to the Thames.
What Foots Cray customers ask us
Do you cover all of Foots Cray, up Sidcup Hill to Sidcup?
The whole DA14 village: the High Street by the Seven Stars, the turnings off Rectory Lane and Cray Road, Suffolk Road, Maidstone Road out towards the A20, and up Sidcup Hill to where Foots Cray becomes Sidcup. If you are on a boundary and unsure, give us the postcode and we will confirm it in a minute.
Do I need to sort out parking for you?
Rarely. The village streets sit outside Bexley’s controlled zones and most semis here have a drive we can pull onto. For cottages that open straight onto the High Street pavement we park in the nearest side turning and run the hose in, because kerbside stopping on the A211 itself is a bad idea. It changes nothing on the price.
Can you clean curtains and mattresses as well?
Yes. Lined curtains are cleaned hanging in place, which avoids the shrinkage risk of taking them down, and we work carefully around poles and pelmets. Mattresses get hot-water extraction and a deodorise. Both are regular bookings in Foots Cray’s older houses, usually added to a carpet clean to save a second visit.
How long does a carpet take to dry in a Foots Cray house?
Most synthetic carpets are dry within 6 to 7 hours. Dense wool pile in an older, cooler house, like a cottage near the village centre, sits at the top of that range, so in winter we finish with airflow driers and ask you to crack a window. Book a morning slot and a Foots Cray lounge is back in use by the afternoon.
Can you get meadow mud out of a pale hall carpet?
Usually, yes. Mud off the Cray is fine silt, and it sinks to the base of the pile long before it shows on top. We vacuum hard first, pre-treat the hall and the path to the kitchen, then rinse it out with hot-water extraction. Fresh marks lift well. A tidemark that has been walked in all winter we can lighten a long way, and we tell you before we start if it may not go completely.
How long does a stairs-only visit take?
Usually under an hour for one flight and the landing. Stairs-only bookings are common here, because the treads in a busy family house grey down the middle well before the bedrooms need doing. One flight costs from £41, and the stairs are dry within 6 to 7 hours, so the family can use them gently by lunchtime.
Every job carries our re-clean guarantee: if you are not happy, we come back and do it again at no charge. Our technicians are DBS-checked and fully insured, and we have cleaned for Bexley households since 2009. Book your Foots Cray clean today.
