In 1902 Robert Baden-Powell stayed in the Mill House beside the windmill on Wimbledon Common and wrote parts of Scouting for Boys there. The big houses that ring the Common are mostly detached, with three or four reception rooms and wool on the stairs, and London Carpet Cleaning has cleaned around Wimbledon Common, SW15 and SW19, since 2009. Large rooms or small, it costs from £36 a room, and carpets are dry within 6 to 7 hours.
Grand houses round a common saved in 1871
Wimbledon Common is one of the largest open spaces in London, and it is still open because of a fight in 1871, when local people stopped Earl Spencer enclosing most of it and an Act of Parliament handed it to the Conservators who look after it today. The windmill at its centre was built in 1817, is listed Grade II*, and stands in the London Borough of Merton. Most of the Common is in Merton too; its north-east corner, Putney Heath, runs over the boundary into Wandsworth and the SW15 postcode.
The housing around the edges is grander and more spread out than almost anywhere we cover. Roads like Parkside Avenue and Victoria Drive hold big Edwardian and interwar detached houses, many with three or four reception rooms and a study, set behind their own drives. Closer to the Telegraph pub on the Putney Heath side you get substantial mansion blocks and converted halls of flats looking straight onto the heath. On the Merton side, the houses run along the Common’s southern and eastern edges towards the Village, and many of them back straight onto the grass.
The houses round the Common in numbers
| Homes that are | Share |
|---|---|
| Detached houses | 39.0% |
| Four or more bedrooms | 52.4% |
| Owned outright | 45.9% |
| Flats in purpose-built blocks | 19.1% |
| Built before 1900 | 19.9% |
| Built 1945 to 1972 | 30.5% |
These are the biggest homes we clean anywhere. More than half have four or more bedrooms (52.4%), and 39.0% are detached, a share you rarely see inside London. Ownership is settled: 45.9% of households own outright, with no mortgage, and many families have lived with the same carpets for years. That shows in the work. Drawing-room wool and a long stair runner are the usual job, and a good clean is planned as a morning, sometimes a full day.
The age mix is wider than the big villas suggest. One home in five (19.9%) was built before 1900, but the largest single band in the VOA count is 1945 to 1972 (30.5%); Merton’s own history of the area notes there was little building west of Westside until after the Second World War. For one of the large family houses, four bedrooms with a through-lounge and the main staircase, the bill comes to £246. Heating is no problem here; only 0.7% of homes lack central heating, so a wool carpet dries on time with the heating on low.
Figures: ONS Census 2021 (Merton 002) and VOA council tax stock, March 2024.
Parking on both sides of the boundary
Most houses on the Common have a drive or off-street space we can pull onto, which makes loading the equipment simple. Where they do not, the rules depend on the council. On the Putney Heath side, Wandsworth’s zone P1 has run since June 2022 on Bowling Green Close, Heathview Gardens, Portsmouth Road, Telegraph Road and Wildcroft Road, and it is controlled for one hour only, 11am to noon, Monday to Friday. Telegraph Road and Wildcroft Road also have free bays with a four-hour limit on weekdays. On the Merton side, the Village zones (VC, VN and the VO zones) run Monday to Saturday, 8.30am to 6.30pm.
The Common’s own car park, next to the windmill on Windmill Road, is free and holds 300 cars; it is there for visitors to the Common, so we use your drive or the kerb. The 93 bus stops at Windmill Road. Inside, the long carry is the stairs; in a house of this size we bring an extra length of hose so the machine can stay at the front door while we work two floors up.
Antique rugs and boots off the heath
The job here is about fibre and size more than grime. Drawing rooms are often laid with wool carpet or a pale stair runner that shows traffic down the middle long before it shows dirt, and we get a lot of red wine and coffee marks on antique rugs and good upholstery. The Common is the other constant: dogs and walking boots come back off the heath caked, so the worst wear is usually the hall and the bottom flight of stairs.
Old set stains that earlier cleaners have scrubbed and heat-dried, the kind of ring that has sat in a study carpet for years, can lift a long way but will sometimes leave a faint shadow in very pale wool. We will tell you on the day if that is what we are looking at.
How much does carpet cleaning cost in Wimbledon Common?
We fix the price before we arrive and there is no call-out fee; the figures do not change from one borough to the next.
- 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
A two-bedroom mansion-block flat with its living room is £115. Get a free quote, or call us on 020 8077 8090.
What we clean in the big houses
Our main work is hot-water extraction, the deep steam carpet cleaning that suits the wool and the pale runners in these houses. For the big linen and leather pieces in the drawing rooms we do sofa and upholstery cleaning on site, including leather clean and condition for a dry Chesterfield. Antique and Persian pieces get proper rug cleaning in the home once a photo has shown us the piece is safe to clean on site. We clean the rest of Merton too, and over the Common in nearby Kingston Vale.
Questions from around the Common
Which roads and postcodes do you cover here?
All the roads around the Common, on both sides of the boundary: the SW19 streets on the Merton side towards the Village, the SW15 roads on the Putney Heath side such as Wildcroft Road and Telegraph Road, and the roads off Wimbledon Parkside such as Parkside Avenue and Victoria Drive. Give us your postcode and we will confirm straight away.
Can your van park on these roads?
Most houses here have a drive or off-street space we can pull onto. In Wandsworth’s Putney Heath zone the controls run for one hour, 11am to noon on weekdays, so we arrive after that or use your drive. In Merton’s Village zones we plan around the 8.30am to 6.30pm hours. The mansion blocks near the Telegraph usually have forecourt parking.
How do you clean an antique or Persian rug?
Delicate and antique rugs are cleaned in your home, during the visit. Send us a photo first and we will say whether the piece can be cleaned safely on site; silk or very old rugs sometimes cannot. If it can, we vacuum out the loose grit, pre-treat marks, then shampoo and rinse it by hot-water extraction. A valuable Persian piece gets a slower pass, which protects the colours and the foundation.
How long do carpets take to dry in a large Wimbledon Common house?
Hot-water extraction leaves a carpet dry in about 6 to 7 hours, and until then we ask for socks, not shoes. Heavy wool and a thick stair runner hold a little more moisture, so we set down airmovers and leave windows ajar. Large, well-aired rooms sit at the shorter end of that. Rugs cleaned on your floor dry in place, alongside the carpet.
Our house has two staircases. How is that priced?
Each flight is priced on its own, from £41, so a main staircase and a back or attic stair are two flights. Landings come with the stairs. In houses this size we often clean the main stairs and landings first, while the bedrooms are still being cleared, so tell us about every flight when you book and the quote will cover them all.
Is my house in Merton or Wandsworth, and does it matter?
Most homes on the Wimbledon side of the Common are in Merton, while Putney Heath and the SW15 roads around the Telegraph are in Wandsworth. For the clean it makes no difference: the price and the team are the same. It only matters for parking, because the two councils set different zone hours, so give us your full postcode.
Every clean comes with our re-clean guarantee: if a treated area does not come up as agreed, we come back and put it right at no cost. We are fully insured and DBS-checked, and we have cleaned around Wimbledon Common and Putney Heath since 2009.
