Eight of the houses put up on Denmark Street in the 1680s still stand, with flats above the guitar shops, and a few steps away Centre Point and Central Saint Giles hold nearly two hundred more homes between them. London Carpet Cleaning has cleaned across St Giles, WC2, since 2009. Rooms start from £36, and a cleaned carpet is dry within 6 to 7 hours.
From 1680s houses to a converted office tower
St Giles is the old parish around St Giles-in-the-Fields, Henry Flitcroft’s church of 1734, whose story begins with a leper hospital founded in 1101. Camden protects the streets around the church as the Denmark Street Conservation Area. Denmark Street itself was laid out by Samuel Fortrey and Jacques Wiseman in the late 1680s, and eight of the original houses survive: numbers 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 20, 26 and 27. Camden’s appraisal says it is the only street of that age in inner London with original houses still standing on both sides. Above the music shops, those houses are flats now, small rooms off an old staircase.
The newer homes are big blocks. Centre Point, the 117-metre Brutalist tower at St Giles Circus, sat as offices for decades; the conversion began in 2015 and finished in March 2018, leaving 82 apartments in a Grade II listed building. Round the corner, Central Saint Giles was Renzo Piano’s first building in the UK, finished in May 2010 and faced with 134,000 glazed tiles in orange, red, lime and yellow. Its 15-storey block on the western edge of the site holds 109 flats, and 53 of them are affordable homes.
Between the two sits the Phoenix Garden on Stacey Street, built on a bombed site, opened in 1986 and still run by volunteers from the flats around it; its pond holds the only frogs in the West End. Tottenham Court Road station is on the doorstep, with the Central, Northern and Elizabeth lines, and that is why so many flats here are let to people who work nearby.
St Giles homes, counted
| Homes that are | Share |
|---|---|
| Purpose-built flats | 77.2% |
| Flats over shops or in other converted buildings | 10.5% |
| Rented privately | 40.7% |
| Rented from the council or a housing association | 34.3% |
| One-bedroom homes | 48.5% |
| Built before 1900 | 41.5% |
The census does not count St Giles on its own. Its nearest neighbourhood takes in St Giles together with Holborn and the south end of Bloomsbury, and the picture is clear enough: almost every home is a flat, and almost half have one bedroom (48.5%). Most jobs here are a bedroom, a living room and a hall, carried up in a lift or a communal stair. A one-bed flat above the Denmark Street shops, bedroom and living room together, comes to £79.
Three in four homes are rented. The 40.7% let privately turn over often, and each change of tenant tends to bring a carpet clean before the deposit is settled. Another 34.3% rent from Camden or a housing association, where a family may stay put for years and the living-room carpet carries the wear of all of them. The age figure surprises people: 41.5% of homes stand in buildings put up before 1900, which is the Georgian and Victorian stock of Bloomsbury and the old Denmark Street houses, where wool on the stairs calls for a gentler, low-moisture clean. Only 3.7% of homes lack central heating, so in most flats a radiator on low finishes the drying.
Figures: ONS Census 2021 (Camden 028) and VOA council tax stock, March 2024.
Getting the van and the kit to your door
St Giles is in Camden’s CA-C zone, which covers Holborn and Covent Garden. Paid bays and single yellow lines are controlled from 8.30am to 6.30pm, Monday to Saturday, and resident bays are for permit holders around the clock. In autumn 2025 Camden consulted on stretching those hours to 7am to 9pm on weekdays and adding Sunday controls, so we read the sign at the end of your street before the day. The congestion charge also applies here, from 7am to 6pm on weekdays and noon to 6pm at weekends.
No home here has a drive, so we unload as close as the kerb allows, then move the van to a paid bay and carry the machine in. Centre Point and Central Saint Giles both have front desks; tell us the block and we book the loading slot and the lift through them. In the Denmark Street houses the stairs are old and tight, so we bring a long hose and keep the machine on the pavement side where we can. Clear shoes and bags off the stairs, and lift anything stored on the bedroom floor, and the clean starts on time.
How much does carpet cleaning cost in St Giles?
Our prices are fixed and quoted before we come. There is no call-out fee, and a WC2 address pays the same as anywhere else in Camden or 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; mattress from £35
Get a free quote, or call us on 020 8077 8090.
Sofas, rugs and fitted carpet around St Giles Circus
For the fitted carpet in these flats and on the shared stairs we use hot-water extraction, our steam carpet cleaning, which rinses grit out of the base of the pile and leaves it dry within 6 to 7 hours. In a one-bed above the shops the living-room carpet walks grey down the middle within a year or two, and greasy takeaway marks by the sofa are a regular call. Settees and armchairs, including the pale covers in the newer flats, come under upholstery cleaning. Wool rugs are cleaned inside the flat through our rug cleaning, so nothing is dragged out to a lift landing.
A set-in drink or dye mark lifts a long way, but where it has stained the fibre a faint shadow can stay, and pile crushed flat in a walkway will not spring fully back. We say how far a mark will come before we start. We cover the rest of Camden on the same rounds, along with Covent Garden to the south and Charing Cross down towards the Strand.
Asked by people living around St Giles
Which St Giles streets do you cover, from Denmark Street to Centre Point?
The whole WC2 pocket around St Giles Circus: Denmark Street and the flats above the guitar shops, St Giles High Street, Flitcroft Street, Stacey Street by the Phoenix Garden, Earnshaw Street, Central Saint Giles and Centre Point, out to Shaftesbury Avenue. If your address falls just over the line, the price does not change.
Where does your van park near St Giles Circus?
The area is inside the congestion charge zone and Camden’s CA-C parking zone, and no home has a drive, so we use a paid bay nearby and carry the kit in on foot. Where a block like Central Saint Giles or Centre Point has a porter and a loading bay, we book the slot through them and work to it.
Can you clean carpets for an end of tenancy or a short let here?
Yes, and it is a good share of our work in St Giles, with so many flats let through agents. We clean to the standard an inventory clerk checks against and give you a dated receipt for the file. Book a day or two before the final inspection so the pile is fully dry.
How long will a carpet take to dry in a flat here?
Most synthetic and new-build carpet is dry within 6 to 7 hours, because the extraction pulls the bulk of the water straight back out. These blocks hold their warmth, which helps. Wool and a lower-floor flat sit at the slower end, so we open a window and leave the room airing.
My flat is in one of the old Denmark Street houses. Is the carpet safe to clean?
Yes. The listing protects the building and its old joinery, and a clean does not touch either. What we watch is the wool and the timber. We test the dye first, keep the water low on the treads, and lay protection on the landings so nothing drips onto old boards. Tell us the floor when you book, and whether the house has a lift.
I rent from Camden or a housing association. Can I book you myself?
Yes. More than a third of homes in this part of Camden are socially rented (34.3%), and plenty of tenants book us for a living room or the stairs after years of wear. You pay the same fixed price as anyone else, and we can put the landlord’s name on the receipt if they are paying.
If a patch we treated does not look right once it has dried, ring us and we come back to redo it free; that is our re-clean guarantee. The team is insured and DBS-checked, and St Giles has been on our Camden rounds since 2009.
