Private Housekeeping in Kensington

Where we work in Kensington

Our Kensington round covers the Phillimore Estate and Campden Hill, the Holland Street and Gordon Place lanes, and the garden squares at Edwardes, Kensington and Campden Hill. We work Victoria Road, Launceston Place and the De Vere Gardens apartment buildings, and the red-brick houses of Kensington Court behind the High Street.

Kensington Church Street divides the round in practice as well as on the map, antiques dealers along its lower end, and the quieter residential streets climbing the hill to the north and west.

What we are cleaning

Kensington holds the oldest domestic stock we work in.

Kensington Square was laid out in the 1680s, and several houses there retain original staircases, panelling and floorboards. These are better treated as furniture than as building fabric: no water left standing, no modern polish, and nothing applied to bare timber without instruction.

The Phillimore Estate and the Campden Hill streets are the stucco-fronted nineteenth-century stock, large, well-proportioned, usually still single dwellings rather than conversions, with basements that have been dug out and fitted within the last twenty years.

Kensington Court is the outlier: 1880s red brick with Dutch gables, and among the earliest purpose-built mansion flats in London, which means original service arrangements and, in one or two buildings, lifts that are themselves listed.

Across all three the recurring issue is contents rather than surfaces. We agree in advance what is cleaned, what is dusted and what is not touched at all, room by room, and in writing.

Access, parking and keys

Kensington has been outside the Congestion Charge zone since the Western Extension was removed in December 2010. It remains inside the ULEZ, as all of Greater London does.

The Royal Borough does not operate separate parking zones, which makes W8 among the more straightforward parts of central London to work in, one permit covers the borough. The exception is Kensington Palace Gardens, a private road with gates and a police presence at either end; access there is arranged in advance, by name, every time, and we build the extra time into the schedule rather than treating it as a surprise.

Where a household holds an insurance schedule for its contents, we ask to see the relevant conditions before a first visit. It is a short conversation that prevents a much longer one.

Services in Kensington

• Textile and upholstery care. Silk, wool and antique, tested before treated, and referred on where it should be.
• Private housekeeping. Retained, weekly through daily, with a named housekeeper and a named deputy.
• Deep cleaning. Seasonal, and before a house is returned to. Descaling is most of the work in London.
• Marble and stone care. Cleaning, sealing, stain drawing and honing out etch damage. Etching is not staining.
• After-builders cleaning. Three stages, worked to your contractor's programme. One clean at the end always fails.