In 1901 a tenants’ co-operative built nine houses on Woodfield Road, and Brentham, London’s first garden suburb built on co-partnership lines, grew from there into the Arts and Crafts streets off Pitshanger Lane. London Carpet Cleaning covers Pitshanger, W5, from those roads to the semis and terraces around the Lane. Every job is priced from £36 a room, and a carpet needs up to 6 to 7 hours to dry before normal foot traffic.
How Brentham was built
Pitshanger sits about a mile north of Ealing Broadway, centred on the village-style shops of Pitshanger Lane, with Pitshanger Park and the River Brent along its northern edge. Most of it went up between 1900 and the 1930s. The standout is Brentham. Ealing Tenants Ltd was founded in 1901 under the guidance of Henry Vivian, and its first nine houses, 71 to 87 Woodfield Road, were followed by Woodfield Avenue, Woodfield Crescent and Brunner Road, built as plain Edwardian terraces.
In 1906 the society bought more land and brought in Parker and Unwin, who went on to plan Hampstead Garden Suburb. Their layout gave Brentham its curving roads, small groups of houses and open spaces, and between 1906 and 1911 came Winscombe Crescent, Ludlow Road, Neville Road, Ruskin Gardens, the start of Brentham Way and part of Meadvale Road. The Brentham Club and Institute was opened by the Duke and Duchess of Connaught in 1911, and Ealing made the suburb a conservation area in 1969. Those homes tend to have roughcast render outside and timber floors with fitted wool carpet in the bedrooms and on the stairs. Off Pitshanger Lane itself the stock shifts to solid semis and terraces with bigger reception rooms.
Family houses off the Lane, in census figures
| Homes that are | Share |
|---|---|
| Terraced houses | 36.9% |
| Purpose-built flats | 26.0% |
| Four or more bedrooms | 37.8% |
| Owner-occupied | 69.7% |
| Built before 1919 | 44.2% |
| Built 1945 to 1972 | 16.2% |
Two homes in three here are houses (67.2%), terraces first at 36.9% and semis at 26.5%, and the commonest size is the biggest: 37.8% of homes have four or more bedrooms. Owners live in 69.7% of homes, and 37.3% of all homes are owned outright, so carpets tend to be bought well and kept for a long time.
The build dates follow the suburb. Some 44.2% of homes predate 1919, which takes in Brentham and the first roads off the Lane, and 27.9% went up between the wars. After that come the flats: 16.2% of homes date from 1945 to 1972, and purpose-built flats make up 26.0% of the total, jobs of a few rooms and no stairs. For a four-bedroom house with a through-lounge and one flight of stairs, the total comes to £246. Central heating is missing in just 1.2% of homes, which keeps wool drying on time.
Figures: ONS Census 2021 (Ealing 013) and VOA council tax stock, March 2024.
Wool runners and family spills
The jobs here follow the housing. In the Brentham roads it is almost always wool: stair runners gone grey down the middle from years of traffic, and bedroom carpet that has flattened more than stained. Around the Lane and towards Pitshanger Park we get more of the family stuff, red wine on a dining-room carpet after a dinner, tea on a cream suite arm, and mud walked in off the Brent River paths. We clean wool on the cooler, low-moisture setting so the pile does not shrink or brown.
There is a limit on the oldest runners. Where a wool carpet has worn silver-grey down the centre of a stair flight, cleaning lifts the trapped grey and brightens it a lot, but where the fibres are physically abraded the shading will still show. We tell you which it is before we start.
Parking and access on the garden-suburb roads
This is one of the easier parts of Ealing for the van. None of the Brentham roads, and not Pitshanger Lane itself, appears on Ealing’s lists of controlled parking zone streets, so there is no permit to arrange and the van usually sits outside or on your drive. The nearest controls are a short way south, around Castlebar Park and Castlebar Hill.
The challenge is inside. Brentham houses have narrow halls, cottage-style stairs and small landings, so we bring the hose in through the front door and work room by room. Clear the hall, lift rugs and shoes off the bottom steps, and move anything fragile from the windowsills on the stairs. If the house is in one of the short terraces on a curving road, tell us whether the van can reach the front or needs to sit at the end of the group.
How much does carpet cleaning cost in Pitshanger?
Fixed when you book, no charge for the call-out, and identical to our rates in every other London borough.
- Bedroom carpet from £36
- Living room from £43
- Through-lounge from £61
- Stairs, one flight, from £41
- Two-seater sofa from £57
- Rug up to 3m² from £35
Get a free quote, or call us on 020 8077 8090.
Carpets, chesterfields and old rugs in W5
Most bookings are hot-water extraction, the deep steam carpet cleaning that flushes out what a vacuum leaves behind and rinses the detergent back out so the carpet does not re-soil quickly. We also clean sofas, armchairs and leather with our upholstery cleaning service, which suits the tan chesterfields and cream three-piece suites we see in these houses. Wool rugs get rug cleaning in the house anywhere in W5, and an antique one gets a photo from you first so we can say whether it is safe to clean on site. If you need the same team for the rest of Ealing, that is covered on our Ealing carpet cleaning page, and we work the neighbouring streets in North Ealing and Hanger Lane too.
Pitshanger and Brentham questions
Which Pitshanger streets do you cover, Brentham Garden Suburb included?
All of Pitshanger and the wider W5 area, including the Brentham roads such as Meadvale Road, Brentham Way, Ludlow Road and Winscombe Crescent, and everything off Pitshanger Lane down to Pitshanger Park. The rest of Ealing is ours too, so on the edge towards Hanger Lane, North Ealing or Ealing Broadway it is the same price and the same crew.
Is parking a problem for the van on the Brentham roads?
Less than you would expect. The residential streets around Pitshanger Lane and the Brentham suburb are not in a controlled parking zone, and many houses have off-street space, so the van usually parks close to the door. If your road has any local restriction, let us know at booking and we plan around it.
Can you get grey shading out of an old wool stair carpet?
Usually a good deal of it. That grey line down the middle of a stair flight is trapped soil and traffic film sitting in the pile, and hot-water extraction lifts most of it so the carpet looks noticeably brighter and more even. On a well-worn wool runner we make it much fresher, and we are clear on the day about how far the improvement will go.
How long before we can walk on the carpets again?
Most carpets dry within 6 to 7 hours, and wool a little longer because we deliberately use less moisture on it to protect the pile. We open windows, use air movers where it helps, and time the stairs so you are not stranded upstairs. After a morning clean you can use the rooms normally by the evening, keeping to socks, not shoes, on the stairs until they dry.
How old are the Brentham houses, and does that change how you clean?
Most were built between 1901 and 1915, so many keep original softwood boards under the carpet and gripper strips that have been nailed and renailed for a century. We keep the moisture low so nothing soaks through to the boards, and we check the edges at the stair nosings before we start. If a carpet is lifting at the grippers, we point it out so it can be re-tacked.
Do you clean the flats above the Pitshanger Lane shops?
Yes. These flats usually have their own street door and a steep private stair, which we clean as one flight from £41, with the bedrooms and living room priced per room. The machine goes up by hand while the hose feeds in from the van. Tell us if the entrance is at the back, so we can park on the right side.
If a spot you pointed out comes back, we return and re-treat it at no charge; every job carries that re-clean guarantee. We are fully insured and DBS-checked, and we have been cleaning carpets, upholstery and rugs across Pitshanger and Ealing since 2009.
