The Hale Estate around Sunbury Avenue and Maxwelton Avenue, off Selvage Lane, went up in the late 1920s, soon after the Northern line reached Edgware in 1924. London Carpet Cleaning works both sides of the Green Man junction and both banks of Deans Brook in The Hale, NW7, from £36 a room. A cleaned room is dry within 6 to 7 hours.
Upper Hale, Lower Hale and the brook between
The Hale is where the eastern edge of Edgware meets the western edge of Mill Hill. Its centre is the small run of shops at the junction of Deans Lane, Hale Lane and Selvage Lane. Upper Hale is still known locally as the Green Man, after a historic pub, and Lower Hale is the junction of Hale Lane and Farm Road by the bridge over Deans Brook. Before the 1920s this was farmland with two pubs. Once the trains arrived, the farms at Upper and Lower Hale were sold, and by the early 1930s the fields had become a suburb of bay-fronted semis and detached houses with tiled hallways and two reception rooms.
The area even had its own station once. The Hale Halt opened on 11 June 1906 near the corner of Bunns Lane and Lyndhurst Avenue, later renamed Mill Hill (The Hale), on a single-track line between Finchley and Edgware. It closed on 11 September 1939, plans to bring it into the Northern line were dropped after the war, and the platforms were cleared and buried under spoil from the M1 slip roads. Residents now walk down to Mill Hill Broadway for Thameslink or up Hale Lane to Edgware for the Northern line.
A few landmarks stand out among the interwar streets. Maxwelton House on Hale Lane turned out during renovation to be one of the oldest buildings in the Edgware and Mill Hill area, and is now part of a school. The Grade II listed John Keble Church on Deans Lane is a modernist design finished in 1936. South of the A41 near Stoneyfields Lane, John Groom’s Crippleage opened in 1932 and ran until the 1980s.
The Hale’s homes, from the census
| Homes that are | Share |
|---|---|
| Purpose-built flats | 27.7% |
| Homes with two bedrooms | 27.0% |
| Homes with four or more bedrooms | 26.7% |
| Rented privately | 26.1% |
| Rented from the council or a housing association | 12.6% |
| Built 1945 to 1972 | 20.6% |
| Built 1973 to 1999 | 15.5% |
The census calls this area Edgware East, and it takes in The Hale along with the streets up towards Edgwarebury. Semis still dominate, as you would expect, but the table shows the rest of the picture. Purpose-built flats are 27.7% of homes, and a good share of the newer building came after the war: 20.6% between 1945 and 1972 and 15.5% between 1973 and 1999. Homes divide almost evenly between two bedrooms (27.0%) and four or more (26.7%), so in one morning we can go from a two-bed flat to an extended family house.
Renting shapes a lot of the diary. Private tenants make up 26.1% of households and another 12.6% rent from the council or a housing association, which means end-of-tenancy cleans in the flats and a steady run of move-in cleans in the houses. A two-bed flat with its lounge works out at £115. In the semis the standard booking is a lounge and two bedrooms, and a flight of stairs often gets added once the owner sees the first room finished. Only 1.4% of homes lack central heating, so drying is rarely a worry.
Figures: ONS Census 2021 (Barnet 013) and VOA council tax stock, March 2024.
Parking on Hale Lane and the estate roads
Parking is easy on the estate roads, where nearly every semi has a drive or a paved front. The busier roads are another matter. Barnet’s zone J, which takes in streets in the old Edgware and Hale wards, is controlled from 10am to 11am, Monday to Friday, and stretches of Hale Lane and Bunns Lane towards the Broadway sit in controlled zones too. If you are in one, a free bay or a visitor voucher saves time, or we book you for after 11am.
The Hale ward itself no longer exists; it was abolished when Barnet redrew its wards for the May 2022 elections, and the streets are now split between neighbouring wards. That makes no difference to a carpet clean, but it explains why older parking documents still refer to a Hale ward. The A41 Edgware Way runs along the south side as a TfL red route, so homes beside it get the van round the corner.
Cleaning does not reverse sun fade. Plenty of Hale lounges have a wide bay taking full afternoon light, and a carpet bleached along the window line will come up cleaner but not darker. The same applies to pile crushed flat on stair nosings, and we say what a clean can fix before any work starts.
How much does carpet cleaning cost in The Hale?
Prices are fixed, there is no call-out fee, and the rates are the same across Barnet and every London borough.
- Each bedroom from £36
- Living room carpet 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.
Interwar carpets and family suites
For us this is classic interwar work: fitted carpet over original boards, wool twist on the stairs, and lounge carpets that run the full depth of the house where the two reception rooms have been knocked into one. The bulk of it is steam carpet cleaning, hot water extraction that suits interwar wool and modern synthetic pile alike. Around Selvage Lane and the Hale Estate roads we clean plenty of fabric suites, usually a three-piece that has done a decade of family service, through our sofa and upholstery cleaning, and mattresses tend to come from the Broadway side. Pet accidents and tea spills on cream wool make up much of the rest of the diary. Our rug cleaning is done in the house on the visit, with the floor cleared first. Next door we cover Mill Hill and, further north, Arkley, and you can find the rest of the borough on our Barnet page.
Your questions about The Hale
Do you cover the Edgware side of The Hale as well as the Mill Hill side?
Yes. Lower Hale sits by the bridge over Deans Brook, and we work both banks of it. NW7 addresses around the junction and the HA8 streets just over the brook, lower Deans Lane included, get the same fixed prices and the same local team.
Where does your van park in The Hale?
Most houses here have a drive or hard standing at the front, which is all we need, and our hoses reach from the kerb in any case. Stretches of Hale Lane and Bunns Lane towards the Broadway sit in controlled zones, with zone J controlled from 10am to 11am on weekdays, so a free bay or a visitor voucher there saves time.
Can you clean our bay-window curtains where they hang?
Yes. Lined curtains are cleaned hanging in place with low-moisture extraction, so there is no shrinkage risk and nothing to rehang afterwards. That suits the full-length curtains in Hale bay windows, and it is easy to add to a carpet visit while the machine is already set up.
How long do carpets take to dry in a Hale semi?
Synthetic pile is dry within 6 to 7 hours. Dense wool twist holds water longer, and a mattress can stay damp into the evening, which we flag before we start. These houses air well, so opening the bay window an inch takes a fair bit off the drying time.
Our two reception rooms were knocked into one. Is that priced as one room or two?
One. A knocked-through lounge running front to back is our through-lounge price, from £61, whatever the arch or the step between the two halves. If the two halves have different carpets, tell us when you book so the quote is right. Either way the figure is fixed before we arrive.
The hall has its original 1930s tiles where the stair carpet starts. Will water run onto them?
No. We clean the bottom stairs and the carpet edge by hand with a lighter rinse, so very little water goes near the tiles, and we wipe and dry the tile edge as we finish. Old tiles with worn glaze can mark if water sits on them, which is why we keep that edge dry and keep our kit off the tiled floor.
Every clean in The Hale is covered by our re-clean guarantee: if you are not happy with a result, we come back and go over it again at no charge. The team is DBS-checked and fully insured, and we have been cleaning across NW7 since 2009.
