Princess Park Manor, the flats behind a 24-hour manned gate on Royal Drive, began as the Second Middlesex County Asylum, finished in 1850 and closed as Friern Hospital in 1993. It is one side of Friern Barnet, N11; the other is the Victorian terraces and 1930s semis around Friary Park. London Carpet Cleaning cleans both from £36 a room, dry within 6 to 7 hours, with no call-out fee.
An asylum, a town hall and the terraces between
The name is older than any of the houses. “Friern” comes from the French for brother and refers to the medieval Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, who held the manor. The modern place hangs off one junction, where Colney Hatch Lane runs north and south, Woodhouse Road takes traffic west to North Finchley and Friern Barnet Road leads east to New Southgate. Off Friern Barnet Road run the late-Victorian and Edwardian terraces, solid two- and three-bedroom houses with bay windows, narrow halls and steep, straight staircases. Along Friern Barnet Lane and around Friary Park the stock turns 1930s: semis put up between the wars when the farmland went under brick, most with a drive out front and a through-lounge knocked through somewhere along the way.
Then there are the two big conversions. The asylum building, designed by Samuel Daukes in an Italianate corridor plan, was sold to Comer Homes in 1995 and turned into the apartments of Princess Park Manor, a listed Victorian landmark in thirty acres of grounds, with the modern houses of Friern Village beside it. The old Friern Barnet Town Hall on the Lane, a Neo-Georgian building of 1941 and Grade II listed since 2002, went the same way: Barratt bought it in 2002 and it became the flats of Aldermen Court in 2005. New Southgate station on the eastern edge runs Great Northern trains to Moorgate, and the 43 starts here and runs day and night through Muswell Hill to London Bridge. Friern Bridge Retail Park sits on Pegasus Way at the bottom of the hill, off the North Circular.
How old are Friern Barnet’s houses?
| Homes | Share |
|---|---|
| Built before 1900 | 21.8% |
| Built before 1919 (including pre-1900) | 33.9% |
| Terraced houses | 19.1% |
| Flats in converted houses | 12.5% |
| Flats in other converted buildings or over shops | 6.1% |
| Three bedrooms | 30.3% |
A good share are Victorian. The census area that carries the Friern Barnet name sits in Barnet’s Woodhouse ward, and in the VOA count 21.8% of its homes predate 1900, with a third (33.9%) built before 1919. Those are the terraces with the steep stairs, and the stairs are where a clean takes its time: wool on the treads, a worn lane up the middle and dirt packed into the nosings. Three bedrooms is the most common size (30.3%), the classic terrace or semi. A three-bed house with a through-lounge and one flight of stairs comes to £210.
Conversions are the other thread. One home in eight (12.5%) is a flat inside a converted house, and another 6.1% are flats in other converted buildings or over shops, which covers the town hall and the asylum as well as the rooms above the parades. Every one of those has a shared hall or corridor carpet that takes the whole building’s traffic. With 30.2% of homes rented privately, a fair share of our N11 bookings are tenancy changeovers in exactly these flats. Only 1.5% of homes have no central heating, so drying is rarely held up.
Figures: ONS Census 2021 (Barnet 015) and VOA council tax stock, March 2024.
Whole-house cleans and the straight Edwardian stair
The classic Friern Barnet booking is the whole-house clean: families in the terraces having every room done before a birthday, a new baby or the in-laws arriving, with two cleaners on the job so a full house is finished in an afternoon. Lounge-and-stairs is the other regular order, because that straight Edwardian staircase is the hardest-worked carpet in the house. On the Lane we clean plenty of settees and armchairs, at Princess Park Manor it is pale apartment carpet that shows every heel mark, and good wool rugs are cleaned in place, in the room, on the day. Friary Park and Coppetts Wood keep the hall runners busy with mud and dog paws.
On the older wool twists in the semis, decades of feet flatten the pile at the landing turn and in front of the sofa. A deep clean lifts the soil out but cannot raise pile that has worn flat, so the carpet comes up cleaner and fresher while the shading in the traffic lane stays. We point it out on arrival, before anything is switched on.
Gates, school streets and drives
Parking is kinder here than further in. Most residential streets are unrestricted and the semis have drives, so the van usually sits outside the door. Princess Park Manor is the exception to just turning up: the gate on Royal Drive is manned around the clock, so we need your block and apartment number in advance, and we clear our arrival with the gate before we set off.
Some roads here are School Streets, closed to motor traffic around the school run on weekdays, apart from permit holders. Around St John’s Church of England Primary and Friern Barnet School, Crescent Road and Bethune Road (between The Ridgeway and The Crescent) and Hemington Avenue are closed from 8am to 9am and 2.45pm to 3.45pm. The Avenue, by St Paul’s Church of England Primary, closes from 8.30am to 9.30am and 3pm to 4pm. If you live on one of those roads, we book you mid-morning and have the van loaded and gone before the afternoon closure. Clear the hall, take shoes off the bottom stair and empty the floor of the wardrobe, and the clean starts the moment we are through the door.
How much does carpet cleaning cost in Friern Barnet?
Prices are fixed, with no call-out fee, and the same across Barnet and every London borough. You pay for what we clean and nothing else.
- 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
For a two-bed flat with a living room, the total is £115. Get a free quote online, or ring us on 020 8077 8090.
Sofa, rug and carpet cleaning in N11
Most jobs here are steam carpet cleaning, which is hot water extraction: the right method for the wool twists in the terraces and the dense synthetics in the newer flats alike, with the water and the heat set to the fibre. Our sofa and upholstery cleaning covers settees, armchairs, dining chairs and mattresses, and rug cleaning is done in your home, with a photo first for anything delicate or very old. The same crews cover the rest of Barnet, borough-wide and on the same price list.
Questions we get from N11
Do you cover Princess Park Manor and the rest of Friern Barnet?
Yes, all of it. That means the steep-staired terraces off Friern Barnet Road, the Lane end by the old town hall, the 1930s semis around Friary Park, and the apartments of Princess Park Manor with the houses of Friern Village beside it. We also work both neighbouring patches, Colney Hatch and New Southgate, under the same fixed prices.
Can you get into Princess Park Manor?
Yes. Give us your block and apartment number when you book and we clear access with the gate before we set off. We carry everything in from the van ourselves, so all you need to do is let the concierge know a cleaning team is expected.
Can you clean a whole house in one visit?
Yes, and in Friern Barnet we often do. We send two cleaners for a full terrace or semi, start with the upstairs bedrooms and work down to the hall, and move beds, wardrobe bases and sofas ourselves where they need to shift.
How long will everything take to dry?
Carpets are dry within 6 to 7 hours because the machine extracts most of the moisture as it cleans. Mattresses and thick sofa cushions hold water for longer, so allow the rest of the day. In winter, leave the heating on low and a window cracked.
Our terrace is Victorian. Is a deep clean safe on an old wool stair carpet?
Yes, if the water is matched to the wool. We test a hidden corner for colour first, use a wool-safe neutral solution and keep the moisture low, then extract hard so the treads are not left wet. Old stair carpets are often tacked over felt underlay that holds water, which is one more reason we keep the rinse light on the stairs and groom the pile before we leave.
We live on Hemington Avenue. Can you work around the School Street?
Yes. The road is closed to traffic from 8am to 9am and 2.45pm to 3.45pm on weekdays, and our van has no exemption, so we book you for a slot that starts after nine. A two-bed flat or a lounge and stairs is done well inside the gap. For a whole house we can come on a Saturday, when the closure does not apply.
Every visit is covered by our re-clean guarantee: if a patch has not come up as it should, we come back and do it again free. Our cleaners are DBS-checked and fully insured, and we have cleaned for Friern Barnet households since 2009.
