Fire gutted St Anne’s Church on Dean Street during the Blitz, on 24 September 1940, and only its tower of 1803 was left standing; when the site was rebuilt in 1990 and 1991, part of it was sold for social housing. London Carpet Cleaning covers the flats of St Anne Soho, W1, most of them one or two floors over a shop or a bar. Rooms start from £36, and the carpet is dry within 6 to 7 hours.
The parish around the tower
St Anne’s was consecrated in 1686, and the parish covers the dense block of W1D and W1F that runs from Old Compton Street up towards Soho Square. The tower that survived the bombing is listed Grade II*, and the new church, completed for St Anne’s Day in July 1991, sits inside a community centre. The money for that hall came from selling the rest of the site for social housing and shops, so the parish’s own church now has neighbours who rent their homes from a social landlord.
The churchyard on Wardour Street is the odd one out on any walk through here. It sits about six feet above the pavement because more than 13,000 parishioners were buried in it before it closed to burials in 1853, and some estimates put the total far higher. It has been a public garden since the 1890s; the essayist William Hazlitt is buried there.
Almost nobody in the parish lives in a house. The homes are flats in Georgian and Victorian buildings along Dean Street, Wardour Street, Frith Street and Greek Street, over restaurants, members’ clubs and recording studios, reached by a shared street door and a tight stair. Westminster protects the late 17th-century street pattern, narrow courts and alleys included, as the Soho conservation area, first designated in 1969. The newest flats came with the Elizabeth line: over its western entrance at Tottenham Court Road, Galliard put 23 flats in a building facing Dean Street and Fareham Street and 69 more in one facing Oxford Street.
Small flats, many of them social lets
| Homes that are | Share |
|---|---|
| One-bedroom homes | 48.1% |
| Two-bedroom homes | 35.2% |
| Rented from a housing association or the council | 27.8% |
| Rented from the council | 8.9% |
| Built before 1900 | 44.9% |
| Without central heating | 5.6% |
The census groups the parish with the rest of Soho and with western Fitzrovia, north of Oxford Street, under one name. Inside that area the homes are small. Close to half (48.1%) have one bedroom and another 35.2% have two, so more than eight in ten homes here are one- or two-bedroom flats, and a typical booking is two or three rooms. A one-bed flat over a Wardour Street café, bedroom and living room together, costs £79.
Renting from a social landlord is common: 27.8% of households do, 8.9% from Westminster council and the rest from housing associations and similar landlords, in blocks like the ones built on the church site. Those flats have communal halls that belong to the landlord, so we clean behind your own front door and leave the shared parts to them. The buildings are old; 44.9% of homes were built before 1900. And 5.6% have no central heating at all, which slows the drying, so in those flats we take out as much water as the carpet will give and leave a window open on the latch.
Figures: ONS Census 2021 (Westminster 013) and VOA council tax stock, March 2024.
Why does a Soho carpet smell of the kitchen below?
Living above the busiest hospitality streets in London leaves its own mark on a carpet. The job we are asked for most often here is odour: cooking smells from the kitchen below working up through the floor, plus the street and bar smell that a Soho flat soaks up over a year. We deodorise and hot-water-extract the pile so the smell is removed, and most of the time it lifts. Red wine and coffee rings are the other regulars, along with end-of-tenancy grime, since flats change hands often and tenants move on.
There is a limit to what a carpet clean can do. Where a smell has come up through the structure or the subfloor for years, cleaning clears what the carpet holds, but it cannot seal what is leaking from below. If the source is still active, the smell can drift back, and we will tell you that on the day.
Parking, stairs and the shared street door
These streets are in Westminster’s parking zone G. Paid bays and single yellow lines are controlled from 8.30am to 6.30pm, Monday to Saturday, and the G1 resident bays are kept for permit holders 24 hours a day, every day. Westminster has no visitor permits, so we pay for a bay by app and run long hoses from the van to reach an upper-floor flat.
Inside, the stairs set the pace. Most flats here are up a narrow, steep stair behind a shared door, often beside a restaurant entrance, so we carry the machine up in parts and keep the hose clear of the shop doorway. Deliveries to the restaurants use the same kerbs, so give us the door code and tell the business downstairs that we are coming. Lift rugs and anything stored on the floor before we arrive.
How much does carpet cleaning cost in St Anne Soho?
The price is agreed on the phone, nothing is added for coming out, and Soho is charged the same as Westminster and every other borough we work in.
- 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.
Velvet sofas and set-in stains
The same van covers the lot. Our hot-water carpet cleaning handles fitted carpet and stair runners; upholstery cleaning takes care of sofas, including the velvet two-seaters that take on make-up and foundation where people lean back; and rug cleaning covers hallway rugs on site, with a pre-treatment for a wine stain that has set or spilt nail varnish. We clean across the rest of Westminster too, and you can reach the neighbouring blocks through our West End and Fitzrovia pages.
What St Anne’s residents ask us
Which postcodes around St Anne’s do you cover?
The whole St Anne parish and the streets around it, mainly W1D and W1F: Dean Street, Wardour Street, Old Compton Street, Greek Street, Frith Street, Meard Street and the lanes between them, up to Soho Square and across to Shaftesbury Avenue. If your block is in central Soho, we reach it, on the same prices as anywhere in London.
How do you park for a Soho flat with no driveway?
No flat here has a drive, and the paid bays on these streets are controlled Monday to Saturday from 8.30am to 6.30pm, paid by app or phone. We carry long hoses so the van can sit in a bay or on a side street nearby and still reach an upper-floor flat. An early start is often easiest, before the streets fill.
Can you get cooking and street smells out of a flat above a restaurant?
Usually, yes. We hot-water-extract the carpet and treat it with a deodoriser that neutralises the odour rather than perfuming over it, which clears the smell the fibres are holding. If the kitchen below is still venting up through the floor, expect it to ease a great deal but keep an eye on it, since the carpet cannot block a live source.
How long until the carpet is dry in a small Soho flat?
Most carpets are dry within 6 to 7 hours, and you can walk on them carefully straight after. Upper-floor Soho flats can be warm and a little stuffy, so we open what windows there are and use air movers if needed. Heavy curtains and thick stair runners take a touch longer, and we will let you know what to expect before we start.
I rent from a housing association. Can I book a clean myself?
Yes. Your own carpets and furniture are yours to have cleaned, and you book and pay us direct like any other customer. We work inside your flat only; the communal hall and stairs are the landlord’s to arrange. If you are moving out, we give you a dated receipt to show at the check-out, which some tenancy agreements ask for.
What time of day is best for a clean in Soho?
A weekday morning. Before 11am Westminster lets a van load on a yellow line for as long as the work takes, and after that only for 20 minutes, so an early start keeps the van close. By lunchtime the pavements are busy, and evenings belong to the bars and restaurants. On Saturdays the streets are at their fullest.
Every clean comes with our re-clean guarantee: if a treated spot is not right, we come back and put it straight. We are fully insured and DBS-checked, and we have cleaned across Soho and the rest of Westminster since 2009.
