New Malden’s station opened on 1 December 1846, seventeen years before Kingston had one, and the first streets laid out beside it were the six Groves, Acacia, Chestnut, Elm, Lime, Poplar and Sycamore, each planted with its own tree. London Carpet Cleaning cleans their Victorian and Edwardian houses, and the flats and semis around the High Street, across New Malden, KT3. A room is cleaned from £36, and it is dry within 6 to 7 hours.
The Groves, the High Street and Little Korea
Until the 1830s this was open country, cut off from Kingston by Norbiton Common. The railway changed that. The station began as Coombe and Malden, the High Street grew south from it over the old common, and the Groves to the west of the High Street were the first part of the new town. Plots there were sold as the roads went in but filled slowly: by 1900 they held a mix of Victorian villas and semi-detached cottages, and by the end of the Edwardian years there were tidy groups of red-brick terraces, the corner of Poplar Grove and Lime Grove the best of them. Most of the houses spreading out from the station were finished by the end of the Edwardian era, many of them two and three-bedroom terraces, and plenty are now split into flats.
The town grew again after the Kingston by-pass opened in 1927, from 20,000 people in 1928 to 25,000 by 1931, which is when the 1930s semis towards Burlington Road and Malden Road went up. Kingston has the largest South Korean expatriate community in Europe, and New Malden is its shopping and cultural centre, with Korean supermarkets, about twenty Korean restaurants and cafes, and Korean churches and nurseries. On the High Street the old council offices are now part of the Waitrose, and the 1960s Cocks Crescent development south of Blagdon Road includes the seven-storey car park. Trains run to Waterloo and out to Kingston, Richmond, Hampton Court and Shepperton.
New Malden in numbers
| Homes that are | Share |
|---|---|
| Rented privately | 30.8% |
| Flats of any kind | 36.7% |
| Flats in purpose-built blocks | 27.7% |
| Built before 1919 | 33.9% |
| Two bedrooms | 23.0% |
| One bedroom | 15.2% |
The census area for the town centre is New Malden East, which runs from the High Street across to Beverley Park. A third of its homes (33.9%) were built before 1919, the Victorian and Edwardian stock around the station and the Groves, and 36.7% are flats, most of them in purpose-built blocks (27.7%) with the rest carved out of older houses or above shops. Private renting stands at 30.8%, close to one home in three, so a lot of our New Malden bookings are a let changing hands.
The flats are small: 15.2% of homes have one bedroom and 23.0% have two. The typical rented job is a two-bed flat over a shop or near the station, and both bedrooms with the living room come to £115. In the older houses it is the hall and the stairs that show the wear first.
Figures: ONS Census 2021 (Kingston upon Thames 007) and VOA council tax stock, March 2024.
Parking around the High Street and the Groves
New Malden has no controlled parking zone on Kingston Council’s list; the borough’s zones are in Kingston, Norbiton and Surbiton. Some streets do have smaller permit parking areas, and in the winter of 2024 the council consulted residents on Dickerage Lane, Warwick Road, Stafford Road and Lincoln Road about bringing in a permit area or a controlled zone, so check the signs on your road. On most residential streets the van parks at the kerb or on a drive close to the door.
The Groves are tighter. The council’s own study lists on-street parking as an issue there, where the plots are small. We find the nearest space, sometimes round the corner, and run a long hose. On the High Street itself, where the shops front the pavement, we park in a side road and carry the kit in. Weekday mornings are busy around the station, so for a flat close to it, a mid-morning start works best.
Hosting, cooking and worn stair lines
A lot of our New Malden work is built around hosting. We clean a great deal before family gatherings and holidays such as Seollal, and the stains that come with serious home cooking: soy sauce by a kitchen doorway, turmeric near a dining table, the kind of marks people have usually given up on. Cream fabric sofas grubby on the arms are common in the converted flats, and stairs worn through the middle of the run, where the whole household walks the same line, come up again and again in the semis. Where a wool carpet by a busy kitchen has had years of greasy cooking traffic ground in, a clean lifts the soil and the smell, but a flattened, shaded lane down the centre will look refreshed, not brand new. That is something we point out at the start.
How much does carpet cleaning cost in New Malden?
We fix the price before the visit and charge no call-out fee, with the same list across Kingston upon Thames and the rest of 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
Get a free quote, or call us on 020 8077 8090.
The kit we use in New Malden homes
Our hot-water extraction method, the same steam carpet cleaning we use on every job, rinses out detergent and soil and leaves the pile dry within 6 to 7 hours. The same machine handles sofa and upholstery cleaning, from cream fabric three-seaters to dining chairs and heavy lounge curtains. Loose rugs we clean in the home through full rug cleaning, shampooed and rinsed the same way as the carpets. We cover the rest of Kingston upon Thames too, along with neighbouring Motspur Park and West Barnes.
Asked by New Malden customers
Which New Malden postcodes do you cover, from the High Street to Coombe?
All of KT3, from the High Street and the station across to Malden Road, Blagdon Road, Burlington Road and the Coombe side. We also reach the KT3 streets shared with Motspur Park and West Barnes, and the KT4 and KT2 areas around Worcester Park and Kingston. If you are near the New Malden border and unsure, send the postcode and we will confirm.
Is parking a problem on New Malden streets?
For most of New Malden it is easy. The 1930s semis off Burlington Road and Malden Road tend to have driveways or unrestricted kerb space, so the van can pull up close. The council has consulted on a permit scheme for the roads around Dickerage Lane, so where there are bays we will use a visitor permit or park nearby and run the hose in. It makes no difference to the price.
Can you get cooking and curry stains out of a dining-room carpet?
Usually, yes. Turmeric, soy and similar food stains are some of the most common jobs we get in New Malden, given how much cooking goes on in local kitchens. We treat the stain directly before the main clean. Fresh marks lift best, and older set-in ones often come out completely, though a few stubborn dyes can leave a faint shadow.
How long will a through-lounge carpet in a New Malden semi take to dry?
Most carpets are dry within 6 to 7 hours of us finishing, because hot-water extraction pulls the bulk of the moisture back out as it rinses. Thick wool or the long through-lounge of a 1930s semi can take a little longer. Open a window or leave the heating ticking over and a morning clean is usually dry by the evening.
Is parking harder in the Groves?
A little. The houses there sit on small plots and many have no drive, so the kerb fills up in the evening and at weekends. We aim for weekday mornings, when more cars are out, park as close as we can and run the hose along the pavement edge, so nobody trips on it.
The lounge carpet smells of cooking. Will a clean shift it?
In most cases, yes. Cooking smells sit in the grease that settles into the top of the pile near the kitchen, and a hot-water clean with a degreasing pre-spray takes that out. Keep the kitchen door shut and the extractor running while you cook, and the carpet stays fresher for longer. A sofa that smells the same way can be cleaned on the same visit.
A re-clean guarantee covers every New Malden job, so anything not right after treatment brings us back free. We are fully insured and DBS-checked, and we have cleaned across New Malden and the rest of Kingston since 2009.
