Private Housekeeping in Knightsbridge

Where we work in Knightsbridge

Our Knightsbridge round takes in Hans Place, Hans Crescent and Cadogan Square, the Pont Street and Lennox Gardens terraces, and the garden squares at Montpelier and Brompton. We work the Sloane Street apartment buildings, the mansion blocks along Knightsbridge itself, and the park-facing schemes opposite Hyde Park.

Beauchamp Place and Walton Street, with their smaller flats above shops, form part of the same round. Rutland Gate and Ennismore Gardens sit at the western edge, where Knightsbridge runs into South Kensington and the postcode changes to SW7.

What we are cleaning

Three strands, and the borough boundary runs through them rather than between them.

The Cadogan Estate stock is the most recognisable: tall red-brick and terracotta houses in the Pont Street Dutch style of the 1880s, with gabled frontages, deep bays and a great deal of exterior modelling that throws dust inward. Inside they are vertical — five or six floors, narrow service stairs, original joinery throughout.

The mansion blocks are the second strand and the most demanding logistically. Porters, service lifts booked in advance, delivery windows that do not move. We put the same housekeeper on the same block for precisely this reason: familiarity with a building here is worth more than speed.

The third is the park-facing new build — lateral apartments with integrated systems, stone specified throughout, and in several buildings a resident security team who will want to know who is arriving and when. We provide staff lists and photographic identification ahead of a first attendance as standard, and we expect to be asked for them.

Access, parking and keys

Knightsbridge has not been in the Congestion Charge zone since the Western Extension was removed in December 2010 — worth stating plainly, because a good deal of published advice is still out of date on it. It is inside the ULEZ, as all of Greater London now is, and our vehicles are compliant.

Parking is where the two-borough split bites. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is unusual in not dividing itself into zones, so one permit covers the whole borough. Cross into Westminster and the rules change, including the absence of any visitor permit scheme at all. Our teams work to whichever side of the line the property sits on, and the cost sits inside your retainer either way.

Where a building has a porter we deal with the porter. Where it has a security team, we supply staff details in advance.

Services in Knightsbridge

• 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.
• Textile and upholstery care — Silk, wool and antique, tested before treated — and referred on where it should be.
• Laundry and wardrobe care — Handled in the house, nothing sent out. Seasonal rotation, correct storage, moth prevention.