Harefield has never had a station or a main road through it, and that is why it still feels like a village 17 miles from Charing Cross. Down by the Grand Union Canal on Coppermill Lane are small nineteenth-century cottages built for the mill, brickfield and lime-works hands, and up the hill are the council houses of the 1920s and 1940s. London Carpet Cleaning covers Harefield, UB9, from £36 a room, with carpets dry within 6 to 7 hours.
A village the main roads missed
Harefield sits in the far north-west corner of Hillingdon, close to the Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire boundary. By 1959 the parish was still lightly built up, partly because no main or trunk road passed through it and no railway station served the village, and it remains one of the few Middlesex villages where the old farming pattern survived. There is still no tube or rail station; the U9 and 331 buses run to Uxbridge and Northwood, and the roads out to Denham and Rickmansworth do the rest.
The village’s best-known building is Harefield Hospital, now the largest specialist heart and lung centre in the UK and the place where Sir Magdi Yacoub carried out his transplant work. The village also has an older hospital story: in the First World War, Harefield Park was an Australian military hospital, and more than 100 soldiers of the Australian Imperial Force who died there are buried at St Mary the Virgin, and an Anzac Day service is held there every year.
From mill cottages to council semis
The housing comes in layers. Around the Village Conservation Area and Church Hill, near St Mary’s, are older brick cottages and period houses with wool carpets and stairs that have taken decades of traffic; the brickworks company put up workers’ houses on Church Hill in 1916. Down the lower streets near the canal and the River Colne, along Coppermill Lane and towards the lock, are the smaller cottages built for the mill and lime-works hands.
Then came the council. Uxbridge built 212 houses between 1919 and 1923 at Moorhall, around the common and at Mount Pleasant, and another 273 between 1936 and 1951 around Church Hill, Mount Pleasant and Northwood Road, close to 500 in all. Those solid semis and terraces, with proper halls and stairs, make up a big share of what we clean. Harefield Grove, about a kilometre north of the village on the east side of Rickmansworth Road, is the odd one out: a Grade II listed early nineteenth-century house in around seven and a half hectares, restored into a small number of houses with converted apartments alongside.
Harefield’s homes by the numbers
| Homes that are | Share |
|---|---|
| Semi-detached houses | 37.8% |
| Terraced houses | 21.7% |
| Rented from the council | 15.9% |
| Owned outright | 33.0% |
| Two-bedroom homes | 32.0% |
| Built before 1919 | 10.6% |
| Built 1945 to 1972 | 41.5% |
The census area matches the village closely. Semis are the main house type (37.8%), with terraces next (21.7%), and the biggest building period is 1945 to 1972, at 41.5% of homes, when the council’s second wave and the post-war estates went up. A tenth of homes (10.6%) are older than 1919: those are the cottages by the canal and round Church Hill, where the wool stairs and the uneven floors are. The council still rents out 15.9% of homes, and a third (33.0%) are owned outright.
For our work that means a lot of two- and three-bedroom houses with one flight of stairs. Two-bedroom homes make up 32.0% of the total. A three-bedroom council-built semi on Mount Pleasant with a through-lounge and the stairs comes to £210. Just 1.2% of homes have no central heating; the coldest rooms tend to be the ground floors of the oldest cottages, and that is where drying needs the most help.
Figures: ONS Census 2021 (Hillingdon 003) and VOA council tax stock, March 2024.
Mud off the common and the towpath
The commonest call is mud, by a distance. Dogs come back off the common, the canal towpath and the fields around Coppermill Down caked in it, and the paw trail runs from the front door through the hall and into the front room. That lifts well, and the doggy smell goes with it. After that it is family wear: lounges and stair flights dulled by years of children and grandchildren, cream sofas that met a glass of red at dinner, and wool rugs that we clean in place with a pre-treatment, a shampoo and a hot rinse.
Damp is the limit we spell out. In the older canal-side and Colne-valley cottages the ground floors can hold damp, and where a carpet has wicked up moisture over years we can clean and deodorise it, but we cannot dry out a floor that stays wet from below. If the underlay smells again within days, the floor needs looking at first.
Vans, lanes and cottage rows
With no station, everything comes by road, and parking is rarely the problem it is in inner London. Most Harefield homes have a drive or on-street space with no controlled zone, so we pull up close and run our hoses from there. On the tighter cottage rows near the canal we carry longer lines, so a spot a couple of doors down still works, and on Park Lane the canal bridge runs one way at a time on traffic lights.
Before we arrive, lift rugs and dog beds off the floor, and in the cottages move anything stood on the stairs. If a ground-floor room has had damp, tell us when you book, and we will look at it before we decide how much water to use.
How much does carpet cleaning cost in Harefield?
Prices are fixed, with no call-out fee for the drive out, and they match what we charge across Hillingdon and every London borough we cover.
- 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 two-bedroom terrace with a living room and the stairs is £156. Get a free quote, or call us on 020 8077 8090.
Fitted carpet, sofas and loose wool
Fitted carpets get hot-water extraction, the proper steam carpet cleaning that rinses the pile and lifts the dirt out of its base. For sofas and armchairs, our upholstery cleaning is matched to the fabric, so a cream two-seater is dealt with more gently than a hard-wearing weave. Anything loose, and especially wool, we handle as rug cleaning in the house during the same visit. We cover the rest of Hillingdon on the same fixed prices, and neighbouring Denham just over the border.
Questions Harefield asks
Do you cover Harefield from Church Hill down to Coppermill Lock?
All of it. That means the village core around the High Street and Church Hill, South Harefield down towards Uxbridge and around Mount Pleasant, Harefield Grove on Rickmansworth Road, and the canal-side lanes by Coppermill Lock. If your postcode starts UB9, or you are just over the line in Denham, we clean there on the same fixed prices.
There is no station here, so how do you reach us?
By van, and parking is rarely the problem it is in inner London. Most Harefield homes have a drive or on-street space with no controlled zone, so we pull up close and run our hoses from there. The cottage rows near the canal take a longer line, which we carry.
Can you get a full deposit back for an end-of-tenancy clean?
End-of-tenancy work is a regular part of our Harefield bookings, with rentals around the hospital and in the newer conversions. We clean carpets to the standard letting agents expect for a check-out, including the worn strip by the front door. Book a day or two before your inventory so everything is dry and presentable when the agent walks through.
How long do carpets take to dry in a Harefield cottage?
Usually 6 to 7 hours for a normal carpet, because extraction pulls most of the moisture back out and the pile is not left soaked. Wool and the thicker carpets in the older cottages around Church Hill sit at the longer end. Open a window or leave the heating ticking and a morning clean is dry by the evening.
Our cottage floors are old and uneven. Can you still clean the carpet?
Yes. Uneven boards make no difference to the clean itself; the wand follows the floor. What we watch is the water, as old boards and the dust between them should stay dry, so we clean with less moisture and more passes. Tell us if any board is loose or a step creaks badly, and we will go gently there.
Red wine has gone on a cream sofa. Can you save it?
Usually, if you act quickly. Blot it with kitchen roll, add a little cold water and blot again, and do not rub or pour salt on it. Then leave it for us. A fresh mark on a cleanable fabric normally comes out completely; one that has dried in for weeks can leave a faint pink shadow, and we will tell you which it is before we start.
Our re-clean guarantee applies to every clean here: if a treated area does not come up as it should, we return and finish the job. We are fully insured and DBS-checked, and we have cleaned carpets, upholstery and rugs across Harefield and the rest of Hillingdon since 2009.
