Tabard Street was Kent Street, the main road from London Bridge to Kent, until Great Dover Street was cut in 1815 to take the traffic round it. Today it runs from the church of St George the Martyr past the Tabard Gardens estate and its park. London Carpet Cleaning covers St George the Martyr parish and the Borough end of SE1, from £36 a room, dry within 6 to 7 hours.
The parish east of Borough High Street
St George the Martyr is the old Borough parish named after the Grade II* church where Borough High Street meets Long Lane. Dickens set part of Little Dorrit here, and the surviving Marshalsea prison wall still runs along the churchyard. East of the church, the parish homes split two ways.
The first half is Georgian and early Victorian. The Trinity House estate began in 1813, when Trinity Street was laid out, and between 1820 and 1850 its builders lined Trinity Street and Trinity Church Square with tall terraced houses, many since divided into flats, with the former Holy Trinity Church, now Henry Wood Hall, at the centre of the square. Cole Street and Swan Street carry the same pattern with less grand houses.
The second half is the estate. Tabard Gardens was one of the London County Council’s early slum-clearance schemes, planned in 1910 and extended later, with brick blocks grouped round a rectangular garden that keeps its original railings. The park in the middle is still the estate’s own green space, with pitches and a playground, and its entrances are on Pilgrimage Street and Manciple Street. Manciple Street, Pardoner Street and Prioress Street take their names from Chaucer’s pilgrims, who set out from the Tabard in Southwark. Borough station on the Northern line is a few minutes north, with London Bridge and Elephant and Castle both an easy walk. So one job can be a third-floor flat in a Georgian house with no lift, and the next a family flat on the estate.
Parish homes in figures
| Homes | Per cent |
|---|---|
| Flats, all types | 94.3% |
| Three bedrooms | 14.9% |
| Four or more bedrooms | 4.2% |
| Owned outright | 9.3% |
| Shared ownership | 2.9% |
| Built 1919 to 1944 | 4.0% |
The census area round the church and the top of Tabard Street is Borough & Southwark Street (Southwark 002); the estate and its park sit across the line between it and the London Bridge area next door. Flats are 94.3% of homes, so almost every booking is a flat. The larger homes matter more than you might expect: 14.9% have three bedrooms and 4.2% have four or more, and those are the family flats where a sofa and the children’s bedroom carpets take the punishment.
The ownership figures are low at both ends. Only 9.3% of homes are owned outright and 2.9% are in shared ownership, in the newer blocks. The interwar share is small at 4.0% in this census area, since much of the estate counts in the neighbouring one. For our work it means the long-settled owners are few and the turnover is steady. For a two-bed family flat by the park, both bedrooms and the living room, the cost is £115.
Figures: ONS Census 2021 (Southwark 002) and VOA council tax stock, March 2024.
Parking on the Tabard Street side
The streets east of the High Street, Trinity Church Square and Tabard Street among them, are in Southwark’s Newington zone, D. Its hours are 8.30am to 6.30pm on weekdays, and visitor permits are valid in it, so a resident’s visitor permit covers our van. At the weekend the bays are free. Transport for London keeps Great Dover Street and Borough High Street as red routes, so the van goes in a side street, never on the main roads.
For an estate flat, give us the block name and door number so we find the right entrance first time, and whether the lift reaches your floor. In the Georgian houses the stairs are steep and the flats often start on the second or third floor, so the machine goes up by hand and the hose runs from the landing. Clear hall shelves and shoe racks before we arrive.
How much does carpet cleaning cost in St George the Martyr?
Your price is fixed at booking. No call-out fee is charged, and the list is the one we use in every London borough.
- Carpet, 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 (cleaned in your home); mattress from £35
Get a free quote, or call us on 020 8077 8090.
Wool runners, family sofas and worn stairs
The carpets here take a London beating. Period flats off Trinity Street tend to hold wool runners and bedroom carpets that have soaked up years of traffic from the front door, and on the estate we clean a lot of family sofas that two children and a cat have lived on. Stairs are the recurring job in the tall terraces, one or two flights worn down the middle. Carpets get hot-water extraction, the method most manufacturers recommend; read how our steam carpet cleaning works on its own page. Sofas and mattresses are handled in the home by our upholstery cleaning team, fabric tested first so nothing shrinks or marks. Wool runners and rugs that gather grit by a Trinity Street front door are cleaned where they lie, through proper rug cleaning on the same visit. A Berber or wool carpet walked flat through a Georgian hallway for fifteen years cleans up far brighter and softer, though crushed pile or an old bleach mark stays; we point those out first. We cover the rest of Southwark as well.
St George the Martyr parish: questions
Which Borough streets do you cover, from Trinity Street to Tabard Gardens?
All of the SE1 part of the parish: Borough High Street, Trinity Street and Trinity Church Square, Tabard Street, Great Dover Street, Harper Road, Falmouth Road, Swan Street and the Tabard Gardens estate. We reach the rest of Borough and the wider SE1 too, so if your road sits just outside this patch, ask and we will confirm by return.
Where do you park around Trinity Street and the estate?
This is Southwark’s zone D, controlled from 8.30am to 6.30pm on weekdays, so there are few free kerbside spaces by day. We pay by phone at a bay, or display your visitor permit if you hold one. On the estate we just need the block and door number to find the right entrance.
Can you do a full flat for an end-of-tenancy clean?
Yes, and it is one of our most common jobs around Borough given how much of the housing is rented. We clean every carpeted room plus the stairs in one visit, time it to your check-out, and leave the finish letting agents and inventory clerks here expect for the deposit.
When will the carpet be dry in a Trinity Church Square flat?
Usually 6 to 7 hours, because extraction pulls most of the water back out. Upper flats in the Georgian houses benefit from sash windows left open, while a ground-floor room on the estate can sit damp a little longer. We leave the pile as dry as possible, and a morning clean is ready for use by the evening.
Can you clean a three-bedroom family flat in one visit?
Yes. A three-bed flat with a living room and hall is usually a morning’s work for one cleaner, and we can add the sofa on the same visit. Clear toys and anything stored under the beds, and the children can be back in their rooms by the afternoon. We give you the full fixed price before we book.
Can I use my zone D visitor permit for your van?
Yes. Zone D allows visitor permits, so if you have one, put it in the van while we work and the bay costs nothing. If you do not have one, we pay by phone and the parking is never added to your price. At weekends the bays are free anyway.
Our re-clean guarantee covers every visit: if a treated area is not right, we come back and put it straight at no charge. Our insured, DBS-checked team has worked across the parish and the rest of SE1 since 2009.
