Earl’s Court is just north of West Brompton, over the borough line in Kensington and Chelsea. Its station takes both the District and Piccadilly lines, and the streets around it are laid out as garden squares: Nevern Square, built in the 1880s largely by the builder Robert Whitaker, then Earl’s Court Square, Barkston Gardens and Courtfield Gardens. Most homes here are flats.
Stucco houses, cut into flats
Earl’s Court Square shows the mix. Tall stuccoed houses in the Italianate style, many of them long since divided up, share the square with purpose-built mansion blocks such as Wetherby Mansions and Langham Mansions. In the conversions the kitchen is often a run of units at one end of the main room: a single oven under a ceramic or gas hob, with a slim hood built into the cupboards above.
With the cooker a few feet from the sofa, grease does not stay in the kitchen. It settles on the hood, the wall units and the window, and an oven that has had a year or two of baked-on fat can make the whole room smell every time it heats up. Clearing the floor of the cavity, and the fan and element behind the back panel, is what stops that.
Several flats, one house
Where one landlord owns more than one flat in the same house, the ovens can be done one after another on a single visit. Each oven keeps its own price, £77 for a single. The van stays in one bay and we only unpack once, which makes it an easy day to arrange between tenancies.
The one-way system
From its junction with Pembroke Road, Earl’s Court Road carries traffic one way, southbound, while Warwick Road takes it north. Which way the van comes in depends on which side of the station you live, so give us the nearest square or cross street along with the address. The bays are Kensington and Chelsea’s, and if the visit needs a paid one, it is charged at cost.
On the day
A single oven takes about two hours. Racks and runners are left soaking while we work on the cavity and the door glass by hand, all of it in the flat. A ceramic or induction top adds £23 and a gas hob £28, and either can be done while the racks soak.
Earl’s Court prices
| Clean | Price |
|---|---|
| Single oven clean | £77 |
| Two-cavity oven | £110 |
| Single wide oven | £114 |
| 90cm range cooker | £143 |
| 100cm range | £167 |
| AGA, two oven | £143 |
| Hob, ceramic | £23 |
| Gas hob | £28 |
| Cooker hood | £28 |
| Oven, booked with a tenancy clean | £31 |
Crossing into SW5 changes the council, not the prices. The single oven page sets out what the £77 covers, and the hob page explains gas and glass tops. West Brompton is just to the south, and Barons Court is one stop west on the Piccadilly line.