Fulwell bus garage on Wellington Road opened as a tram depot in 1902, and in 1931 London’s first trolleybuses ran out of it. The streets around it, in Fulwell, TW11 and TW12, are mostly Edwardian and interwar terraces with a straight flight of stairs. London Carpet Cleaning has been working these streets since 2009, from £36 a room, with each carpet dry within 6 to 7 hours.
A tram depot, a king’s estate and Edwardian terraces
Fulwell filled in between about 1870 and the late 1930s, built for working and lower-middle-class families, so most of the stock is Edwardian and interwar terraces and bay-fronted semis. Stanley Road and Wellington Road run either side of the bus garage, which London United Tramways built on a site it leased in 1902. Trolleybuses started there on 16 May 1931, the last trams left in 1935, and the garage still runs buses today, with entrances on both roads.
The newest pocket has a royal story. In 1871 the developer Charles James Freake bought Fulwell Lodge and named its grounds Fulwell Park, land that now holds the Strawberry Hill and Fulwell golf courses; Fulwell Golf Club began on leased Freake land in 1904. King Manuel II of Portugal lived at Fulwell Park from 1910, in exile, until his death in 1932. Wates then pulled the house down and built over the grounds, and the street names remember him: Manoel Road, Lisbon Avenue, Augusta Road and Portugal Gardens.
Fulwell spreads across three postcodes, TW2 towards Twickenham, TW11 towards Teddington and TW12 towards Hampton Hill. The station sits on the Shepperton branch, with trains to Waterloo. Most homes here have a lounge-diner and a full straight staircase, and a good number still have wool carpet upstairs.
Teddington North, the census area that covers Fulwell
| Homes that are | Share |
|---|---|
| Terraced houses | 34.0% |
| Flats in converted houses | 11.7% |
| Three-bedroom homes | 29.1% |
| Built before 1900 | 30.8% |
| Built 2000 or later | 13.9% |
| Rented privately | 24.1% |
The census has no area called Fulwell. The streets round the station fall in the one it names Teddington North, which runs from Fulwell east towards Teddington, so these figures cover a little more than Fulwell itself. The terraces dominate: 34.0% of homes are terraced houses, and 30.8% were built before 1900. At 29.1%, three bedrooms is the size we meet most often, and a Fulwell house of that size with its through-lounge and stair flight is £210 to clean.
Two other figures change how we work. One home in nine (11.7%) is a flat in a converted house, where a shared hall and stair carpet takes every resident’s feet and a ground-floor flat often has the original boards under its carpet. And 24.1% of households rent privately, so tenancy check-outs keep us busy. Building has not stopped either: 13.9% of homes date from 2000 or later. Just 1.5% of homes lack central heating, which keeps drying times normal.
Figures: ONS Census 2021 (Richmond upon Thames 018) and VOA council tax stock, March 2024.
Zone FW, the garage gates and the drives
The roads near the station are in Richmond’s Fulwell controlled parking zone, FW, which runs Monday to Friday from 8.30am to 6.30pm. Its bays are for permit holders or pay-by-phone, so on those streets we pay through RingGo for the length of the job or use a visitor permit you give us; on a Saturday the zone does not run at all. Plenty of the semis further out have a short drive, and then the zone does not matter.
Buses come and go from the garage entrances on Wellington Road and Stanley Road all day, so we never stop across them, even to unload. In a terrace with no drive, the van may be a few doors down and we run a long hose. Before we arrive, clear shoes off the stairs and anything stored under the beds. After building work, sweep up the loose rubble first, so the machine only has the fine dust left to pull out.
How much does carpet cleaning cost in Fulwell?
Prices are fixed in advance and match those across the borough, whichever of the three Fulwell postcodes you are in. There is no call-out charge.
- 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
A converted flat with two bedrooms and a living room costs £115. Get a free quote, or call us on 020 8077 8090.
Stairs, sofas and runners in Fulwell homes
Fulwell carpets are cleaned by hot-water extraction, which is what most people mean by steam carpet cleaning: the grit is rinsed out and the water recovered before it can soak in. The period staircase is the job we see most: a straight Edwardian flight with years of traffic holds a dark band of grit down the middle that vacuuming never reaches. On old wool the centre of each tread can be worn flat, and cleaning lifts the dirt but cannot put fibre back, so we say so before we start. We clean sofas and dining chairs through our upholstery cleaning service, leather included, and feed tired leather as well as wiping it. Loose rugs and hall runners are cleaned in the house through our rug cleaning service, shampooed and rinsed there and then. The same terms apply across the rest of Richmond upon Thames too, along with Ham across the river and Eel Pie Island by Twickenham.
Fulwell bookings: what people ask
Which Fulwell postcodes do you cover, including the Fulwell Park estate?
All of them. Fulwell straddles TW11 towards Teddington, TW12 around Hampton Hill and TW2 over the Fulwell Park estate, and none costs extra. We work the whole patch, from the golf course on Wellington Road across to Hampton Road, Stanley Road by the bus garage and the streets near Fulwell station.
Is parking a problem on the older Fulwell streets?
Near the station, there is a weekday zone (FW, 8.30am to 6.30pm), and we pay by phone or use your visitor permit. Further out many roads are uncontrolled and a lot of the semis have a short drive. Tell us your road when you book and the parking is sorted before the day.
Do you handle the end-of-build clean-up?
Yes, and it is common here once an extension or loft conversion finishes. Fine plaster and brick dust settles deep into a hall carpet and turns it grey. Hot-water extraction pulls that dust back out of the pile, and we wear shoe covers and keep well clear of fresh paintwork.
How long until the carpets are dry in a Fulwell Edwardian terrace?
Usually 6 to 7 hours. The thick wool many Fulwell homes keep upstairs, or a heavy stair runner, takes a little longer. A slow final pass draws out most of the moisture, so a clean that starts in the morning is dry by evening, and curtains cleaned where they hang dry quickly with no shrinkage.
Do you clean the 1930s houses on the old Fulwell Park estate?
Yes. The houses on Manoel Road, Lisbon Avenue, Augusta Road and Portugal Gardens were built after the king’s death in 1932, and most have fitted carpet throughout and a drive at the front, which makes the visit easy. A whole-house clean there is a normal half-day job for us.
Our building is a house split into flats. Will you do the communal stair carpet?
Yes. More than a tenth of homes here (11.7%) are flats in converted houses, and the common stair carpet carries everyone’s traffic. It is charged at the stairs rate, from £41 per flight, and fits easily around the clean of your own flat. Tell us who is paying, you, the freeholder or an agent, and the receipt is made out to them.
Our re-clean guarantee means a treated spot that returns gets a free second visit. The team is fully insured and DBS-checked, and Fulwell has been part of our Richmond work since 2009.
