The Brunswick Centre off Marchmont Street, built from 1967 to 1972 and listed Grade II in 2000, holds 560 flats above its shops. Most other homes around Russell Square, WC1, are mansion flats on Bernard Street and Woburn Place or flats in the old terraces. London Carpet Cleaning has worked here since 2009, from £36 a room, and a cleaned carpet is dry within 6 to 7 hours.
Burton’s terraces, mansion blocks and the Brunswick
Russell Square was laid out in 1804, after Bedford House came down, and built mainly by the firm of James Burton for the Bedford family; its gardens, re-landscaped in 2002 on Humphry Repton’s original plan, are open to the public. A number of the original terraced houses survive on the south and west sides, the western ones now University of London buildings. On the east side the Hotel Russell, by Charles Fitzroy Doll, has dominated since 1898.
The homes around the square are almost all flats. Some are in the Georgian and early Victorian terraces, carved into apartments long ago; many more are in the purpose-built mansion blocks along Bernard Street, Herbrand Street and Woburn Place. The other big presence is the Brunswick Centre, designed by Patrick Hodgkinson on the site of run-down Georgian terraces. It was meant to be private, but the flats were leased to Camden as council housing; a renovation from 2002 to 2006 finally painted the concrete cream, as first intended, and the shops below now include a Waitrose and a Curzon cinema. Russell Square station on the Piccadilly line sits just off the north-east corner, on Bernard Street, and Coram’s Fields and Brunswick Square give the pocket its green edge. A good share of the flats are lets, to students at UCL, SOAS and Birkbeck a few minutes away or to short-stay tenants, so carpets here turn over hard.
Who rents, and how big the flats are
| Homes that are | Share |
|---|---|
| Rented privately | 40.7% |
| One-bedroom homes | 48.5% |
| Flats in purpose-built blocks | 77.2% |
| Built 1919 to 1944 | 15.3% |
| Built 1973 to 1999 | 14.5% |
| Heated by electricity only | 22.0% |
Our map point for Russell Square sits at the station on Bernard Street, and the census area that holds it, Holborn, St Giles and Bloomsbury South, runs from there down towards Holborn. Nearly half the homes in it (48.5%) have one bedroom, and 40.7% of households rent privately. That is the profile of a let-flat district: small homes, frequent moves, and carpets judged by an inventory clerk.
The buildings are mostly purpose-built blocks (77.2%). The VOA count dates 15.3% of homes to the interwar years and 14.5% to 1973 to 1999, alongside the older terraces. More than a fifth (22.0%) heat with electricity alone, which slows drying on a cold day unless the heaters run. A one-bedroom mansion flat, bedroom plus living room, comes to £79.
Figures: ONS Census 2021 (Camden 028) and VOA council tax stock, March 2024.
Why are tenancy changeovers the main job?
Because so many flats here are lets, and each change of tenant brings a carpet back to us. A student lounge that has taken a year of foot traffic, a red wine ring by the sofa nobody admits to, an old coffee mark by the desk of someone who works from home: most of that lifts. In the mansion blocks the carpet is often a mid-tone wool that has had front-door grime walked along the hall and into the runner for years.
There we say plainly what to expect. We will get it markedly cleaner and brighter, but wool that has been ground down over a decade will not always come back to new, and a very old dye stain that has set may lighten without vanishing. We tell you which of those we expect before we start, so nobody pays for a result the fabric cannot give.
Getting the kit to the door
Every street here is controlled parking, with paid and permit bays running roughly 8:30am to 6:30pm, Monday to Saturday. We pay for the nearest bay and carry our kit in from there, so you do not need to arrange a permit for us. For the Brunswick Centre we use the loading access off Marchmont Street, then the lift or stair to your landing.
In a mansion block, tell us the floor and whether the lift will take a machine; if it is small, the kit goes up in two trips. In the converted terraces the stair is often narrow, so we lay the hose over dust sheets. Clear the hall runner and any shoes before we arrive, and if the clean is part of a check-out, have the inventory to hand so we can see what the clerk flagged.
How much does carpet cleaning cost in Russell Square?
A fixed price, set when you book, with no call-out fee; we charge the same in WC1 as in any other London postcode.
- 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
Get a free quote, or call us on 020 8077 8090.
Steam cleaning, sofas and runners in WC1
The core service is hot-water extraction, or steam carpet cleaning, which rinses out the trodden-in grit that a domestic vacuum leaves behind and gets a let-flat carpet presentable again. We also handle sofa and armchair cleaning in the flats around the square, the fabric two-seaters and tub chairs that mansion-block living rooms tend to hold. Wool hall runners and the like get specialist rug cleaning where they lie. For work beyond WC1, we cover the rest of Camden from the same team.
Questions we get from around the square
Do you cover Bernard Street, Marchmont Street and the Brunswick Centre?
Yes. We cover the WC1 streets ringing Russell Square, including Bernard Street, Herbrand Street, Marchmont Street, Woburn Place, Guilford Street and Tavistock Square, plus the Brunswick Centre flats in Foundling Court and O’Donnell Court. Nearby we also work in Bloomsbury and Holborn, so a booking either side of the square is no problem.
Where do your vans park around Russell Square?
On the nearest paid bay. The whole area is controlled parking, with pay-and-display and permit bays running roughly 8:30am to 6:30pm, Monday to Saturday, and we pay for the bay ourselves, so there is no need for you to arrange anything. For the Brunswick Centre we use the loading access off Marchmont Street.
Can you clean around a tenancy changeover for a let?
Yes, and it is a lot of what we do here. Give us a slot between check-out and check-in and we clean the carpets so the flat shows well for the next tenant. Carpets are dry within 6 to 7 hours, so an inventory clerk or the incoming tenant can walk them the same day.
Do you clean mattresses and curtains as well as carpets?
We do. Mattresses are treated and deodorised, the usual call after a child’s sickness bug, and they dry faster than people expect. Interlined and lined curtains can often be cleaned in place, or taken down and rehung without shrinkage, which helps in the period flats with heavy drops that are risky to launder at home.
Will an old dye stain come out of a wool carpet?
Sometimes only partly. Hair dye, ink and some drinks put colour into the fibre itself, and once it has set for months a clean can lighten it a long way without removing it. We test a corner of the mark first and tell you what we expect. Fresh dye spills come out far better, so call us quickly.
Can you clean a loose wool hall runner on a mansion-block floor?
Yes. A loose runner on a hall floor is vacuumed, pre-treated, then shampooed and rinsed by hot-water extraction right where it lies, and we move the light furniture out of the way. A runner fixed to the stairs we clean in place too, low-moisture, so the boards and the fixings stay dry. For an old or delicate runner, send a photo first and we will say whether it can be cleaned safely on site.
Every clean is backed by our re-clean guarantee: if a treated area is not right, we come back and put it right at no charge. We are fully insured and DBS-checked, and we have cleaned across Bloomsbury and the rest of Camden since 2009.
