End of Tenancy Cleaning Cranbrook TN17

The clerk who walks Cranbrook cottages carries a step and a torch, and the first thing they do is get their eye up level with the top of the oak. Dust settles along the upper edge of a beam where nobody living in the room can see it, and a finger drawn along that edge has cost more TN17 tenants their deposit than the oven has.

So that is what this job is here: a checklist clean built for the person writing the report, in the Weald town of Cranbrook and the villages around it, at a fixed price by bedroom count, with a 48-hour re-clean guarantee measured against the check-out itself. Ring 0333 555 2076 for a price.

Last updated June 2026. We cover the whole of TN17: Cranbrook and Sissinghurst at the centre, plus Benenden, Frittenden, Goudhurst and the lanes between them. This page sits inside the county directory at End of Tenancy Cleaning Kent.

The beam a clerk checks from the third step

End of tenancy cleaning

from £176

For a studio, fixed by property size, agreed before we start.

Get your price

0333 555 2076 · 8am to 7pm

Cranbrook was designated a conservation area in 1972, and the reason is standing in front of you the moment you turn off the A229. Lovely to live in. Slow to hand back.

a medieval street plan
timber frame and weatherboarding painted white
hung tile and small-pane windows
most of it put up between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries

The town got rich on broadcloth and then stopped, which is why so much of it survived.

Here is the mechanism nobody explains to you, and it is the whole game.

On the day you moved in, a clerk walked the property and wrote a report describing every surface, usually with photographs. Against the kitchen and the bathroom they almost certainly wrote “clean” or “as new”, and on that day it was true, because the place had just been professionally done.
At check-out a clerk walks it again and compares the two, line by line.
Anything materially worse than the check-in entry, past fair wear and tear, is chargeable.

You are being marked against a professional clean whether or not you booked one.

In a Cranbrook cottage that report has more lines in it than a flat’s would. Exposed frame gets named. The hearth gets named. The floor gets named by material, not just by “flooring”. Every named feature is a separate row the clerk can tick or query, and the ones that get queried here are boringly consistent:

the top edge of the beams
the soot bloom on the plaster reveals either side of an open hearth
the chalk on the shower screen
the strip of floor a wardrobe has been standing on for six years

The soot one catches people who have been careful. You sweep the chimney every summer, you think you are fine, and meanwhile eight winters of an open fire have put a brown haze on the lime plaster inside the room itself.

It builds slowly enough that you stop seeing it. A clerk who has never been in the room before sees it in about four seconds.

A finger drawn along the top edge of a beam has cost more TN17 tenants their deposit than the oven has.

Why 205 parts per million decides your bathroom

South East Water supplies Cranbrook, and the hardness published for TN17 sits at roughly 205 parts per million of calcium carbonate, which is just over the line into the hard band. The company inherited the old Cranbrook District Water Company, so the supply here has been chalky for a very long time.

The town’s kettles have always known it.

What that number means in practice is a film. Not a stain, a film: a thin chalk deposit that goes down on chrome, glass and enamel every time water dries on it, invisible at first, then a faint horizontal line on the shower screen at the height the water usually reaches.

A cloth: Wipe it with a cloth and you polish it.
A kitchen spray: You polish it slightly more.
A weak acid: It comes off with a weak acid, left on long enough to work, then rinsed twice and buffed dry. There is no shortcut around the dwell time.

The clerks in TN17 know this better than the tenants do. They check it the same way every time:

the screen, edge-on against the window, because that is the angle the tide line shows at
the shower head, pulled close
a thumbnail run down the tap base

Limescale is the most predictable deduction in this postcode after the oven, and it is the one most likely to be sitting there after a tenant has spent a whole weekend cleaning.

The other half of the water problem is the washing machine drawer and the door seal, where the chalk and the detergent residue combine into a grey scale that grows in the rubber folds. That seal is often the first thing a clerk opens.

The 57 things we go through, room by room

Every booking runs to a 57-point agent-approved checklist, built over a decade of check-outs and tuned to what clerks in this part of Kent actually flag. You get the full list with the job. Here is the shape of it.

End of tenancy cleaning in Islington by Monster Cleaning — A job our cleaners finished in Islington.

The kitchen, which is where the money goes

The oven gets proper attention, not a wipe. Racks go into a hot soak, the inner door glass is cleaned where the door design allows so the brown film between the panes comes out, and the interior, fan, element and seals all get done by hand.

Then the rest of the room:

Hob and burners lifted, knobs off and washed
Extractor degreased and the filter soaked off the unit
Every cupboard inside, outside, on top and underneath, which in a cottage galley means some genuinely awkward corners nobody has been into since the units went in
Fridge and freezer through, once you have defrosted them
Appliances pulled out so the gap behind and under the cooker, the fridge and the washing machine gets done, then put back
Sink, taps, drainer and plughole descaled with a proper soak
Tiles and grout scrubbed rather than wiped
Bin washed
Floor back and mopped

Bathrooms, the other place it goes wrong

Descaling comes first and everything else follows it, and on the older cottage fittings we go careful rather than aggressive.

Shower screen both sides, the runner, the track and the sealant bead
Toilet inside, under the rim, the base, cistern, hinge bolts and the bit behind the pedestal that only the clerk looks at
Bath, taps, the underside of the taps, the overflow and the plughole
Mirrors, cabinets, the shaver socket, and behind anything that stands off the wall
Extractor grille pulled and brushed out
Grout scrubbed back as far as honest effort goes, photographed first where it is plainly past saving
Floor into the corners and under the basin

The rest of the house

Inside every wardrobe, drawer and built-in cupboard, with the rails and runners done and the top edge of the hanging rod dusted
Skirtings, door frames, doors both sides, handles, hinges and the old latch furniture
Picture rails and dado rails, and plenty of cottages here have both
Light fittings and switches
Window sills, reveals and inside glass, with a soft cloth on the leaded lights because the came is soft metal and an abrasive-backed pad will smear it
Radiators behind, under and on top
Walls spot-wiped, with a sensible line drawn, because a nail hole is a decorator’s bill and not yours to scrub off

Then the parts that are specific to this stock:

Oak beams: A dry microfibre along the top edge and nothing else.
Lime-plaster panels: A soft brush, and they stay dry.
The hearth: Swept, with the reveals brushed, patiently, using a barely damp cloth and no spray at all.
Flagstones and old brick floors: Dry-mopped with a pH-neutral solution and never steamed. If a vinegar dilution has been over them at some point in the last year we will find the bloom it pulled out of the wax and deal with that first.
Carpet: Vacuumed in two directions, edges included. Shampoo is a separate add-on where the tenancy asks for it.

Last thing before we leave: a walk-through with a torch held low and sideways, because side-light shows you what daylight hides on a beam edge. Then photographs, every room, before and after. That set is the evidence you keep.

One postcode, three completely different buildings

TN17 looks small on a map and behaves like three different jobs. We work it in three bands, because one method does not pass all of it.

The first band: the conservation core

The High Street running west and Stone Street running south, weatherboarded fronts, jettied first floors, hung tile, the period flats above the shops, and Union Mill standing over the south end of it.

The mill was built in 1814 and is Grade I listed, England’s tallest working smock mill, looked after by Kent County Council and run by the Cranbrook Windmill Association. Everything within sight of it is slow, careful, hand-tool work.

Nothing gets sprayed.
Nothing gets steamed.
The team that goes in has done a listed building before.

The second band: the newer edge

The twentieth-century detached and semi-detached houses and the infill that sits outside the listed core. No beams, no lime, no flagstones, straightforward surfaces, and honestly it is faster work. Same checklist, less tiptoeing. A three-bed out here is a comfortable day rather than a long one.

The third band: the rural spread

Sissinghurst up the road past the castle garden
Frittenden north through the lanes
Benenden and Goudhurst on the far edges
Farm cottages, oast conversions and school-staff lets around Cranbrook School

These are lovely and they are logistical. Long tracks, gates, no pavement, and a van that needs somewhere to sit while two people work for eight hours.

Not sure whether your address counts as Cranbrook? Ring 0333 555 2076 with the postcode. We will tell you in about ten seconds, and we almost certainly cover it.

1 May 2026, and why it lands oddly in a town with no station

The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 came into force on 1 May 2026. It changed the diary and left the cleaning alone.

Section 21: No-fault eviction is abolished.
Existing tenancies: Every existing assured shorthold tenancy in England has converted to a periodic tenancy.
Notice: A tenant can give two months’ notice at any point in the year rather than waiting out a fixed term.
The cleaning: The cleaning side did not change. Not one line.

Cranbrook feels the diary change differently to a commuter town. There is no railway station here. There has not been one since the Hawkhurst branch closed in June 1961, and even when it existed the station sat out at Hartley, the better part of two miles from the town it was named after.

People who work in London drive or bus to Staplehurst, which means tenancies here have historically turned over on the school year and the job year rather than on some quarterly churn. Take away the fixed term and those dates scatter.

Fewer people are now leaving in August because the contract said so, and more are leaving in February because they gave notice in December.

The practical consequence is dull and it pays for itself: book earlier than you used to, because the week you want is no longer the week everyone else wants, and a rural two-cleaner slot is not something we can conjure on a Thursday.

The cleaning side did not change. Not one line.
Our cleaners' work in Bromley.

What it costs, and the sum most tenants run too late

Fixed prices, on the bedroom count. That is the whole price list, and there is no rural supplement for a track.

By bedroom count: A studio is £176. A one-bed is £227, a two-bed £263, a three-bed £359, and a four-bed £445.
Odd properties: Where a property is genuinely odd, a part job, a top-up after a failed check-out, an annex, we work at £30 per hour per cleaner instead.
Carpet shampoo: £29 a bedroom, £36 a living room, or £94 for the carpeted area of a two-bed.
Standalone ovens: £97 single, £130 double and £163 for a 90cm range.

Property	Typical duration	Estimated cost
Studio or period flat above a High Street shop	3-4 hours, 1 cleaner	From £176
1-bed cottage or converted flat	4-5 hours, 2 cleaners	From £227
2-bed weatherboarded cottage off Stone Street	7-9 hours, 2 cleaners	From £263
3-bed house on the newer edge of the town	6-7 hours, 2 cleaners	From £359
4-bed farmhouse, oast conversion or Sissinghurst detached	Full day, 2-3 cleaners	From £445
Carpet shampoo add-on, same visit	Alongside the clean	From £29 a room
Part job or post-check-out top-up	By arrangement	£30 per hour per cleaner

Those figures assume a property in normal lived-in condition. These take longer, and we say so on the phone rather than on the invoice:

a long tenancy with heavy wear
a pet household
a wood burner that has been going every winter
somewhere nobody has deep cleaned in four years

Now run the sum the deposit makes you run. A deposit in this town is capped at five weeks’ rent by law, which on a Wealden family house is real money sitting in a scheme with somebody’s name against it, and the clerk is paid to account for it rather than to wave you through.

Against that, £263 on a two-bed is arithmetic rather than a decision. Most people only do this arithmetic after they have tried it themselves, failed the check-out, and lost the cheap round.

Every booking carries a 48-hour re-clean guarantee. If the agent or clerk flags a cleaning issue inside 48 hours, we come back and redo it free, provided:

nobody has moved in
the place is as we left it

We are on the books of 300+ letting agents, and across the years that work has helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits that would otherwise have gone in deductions. That last number is the actual job: money staying with the tenant.

57-point

agent-approved checklist

4.7

our rating on Google

300+

letting agents on our books

£1.2m

deposits recovered for tenants

Four jobs get muddled together on the phone, so it is worth being clear which one you actually want.

End of tenancy clean: Built to pass an inventory check-out and get a deposit back. Property empty, checklist-driven, judged against the check-in report, with the 48-hour guarantee on it.
Deep clean: The same intensity in a home you are keeping. Lived in, furniture still there, no formal standard to hit and no clerk at the end of it. From £206: two cleaners for at least three hours, kit included.
Regular domestic clean: Ongoing upkeep on a rota, the same cleaner kept on the house, from £23 an hour weekly or £24 fortnightly.
One-off clean: A team job, usually two cleaners for about three hours, from £206, with the kit included. Not the same as the retainer above, and people mix the two up constantly.

Booking it around a Staplehurst commute

The mechanics are simple enough.

Ring 0333 555 2076. Give us the postcode, the bedroom count, the check-out date, whether the property is listed, and anything the check-in report marked as new. Price in about three minutes.
We book you in, ideally the day before check-out so there is a buffer. Allow a week for a rural TN17 slot. Two cleaners out to Frittenden or Benenden is a whole day committed, not a gap we can slot in.
Property empty when we arrive. Furniture out, rubbish gone. We do removals too if you would rather have the move and the clean on one booking, which helps if you are timing the van around a Staplehurst train.
Photographs at the end, every room, before and after, with an itemised invoice on company paper. That is your evidence pack.
Check-out happens. Anything cleaning-related flagged inside 48 hours, we come back and fix it, free.

Two practical notes for this patch.

Parking: Here it is the opposite of the London problem: tell us where the van can actually sit at a cottage with no drive and a road that narrows to one car past the church.
Access: On the rural addresses it matters more than people expect, so mention the gate, the track and whether there is a key safe. A team stood outside a locked farmhouse for forty minutes is time that should have been going on your hearth.

Questions we get asked

How much does end of tenancy cleaning cost in Cranbrook?

A studio is £176, a one-bed £227, a two-bed £263, a three-bed £359 and a four-bed £445. Part jobs and odd properties run at £30 per hour per cleaner. Carpet shampoo and oven work are separate add-ons. Cranbrook is priced by the size of the home. A listed cottage takes us longer than a modern house of the same size, and we absorb that rather than charge for it.

Why is the water in Cranbrook so hard on bathroom fittings?

South East Water supplies the town, and the figure published for TN17 is around 205 parts per million of calcium carbonate. That sits just over the line into the hard band. Chrome picks up a chalky film inside a fortnight, and a shower screen shows a tide mark at the water line that a cloth will not shift. It needs a weak-acid soak with real dwell time, then a dry buff.

Do I have to book a professional clean, or can I do it myself?

You can do it yourself. The Tenant Fees Act 2019 stopped landlords writing professional cleaning in as a contractual condition, so nobody can make you book us. The catch is the benchmark. Your check-out is judged against the check-in report, and that report was written the day after a professional clean. Matching it with a mop and a Saturday is hard in a modern house and harder in a 400-year-old one.

Has Tunbridge Wells Borough Council brought in selective licensing?

No. As things stand the borough has not designated any selective licensing area and has not adopted an additional HMO licensing scheme either. Mandatory HMO licensing still applies to qualifying houses with five or more occupants from two or more households. If you are leaving a room in a licensed HMO in TN17, the licence holder has standing to look at shared areas that a single-occupancy let would never be checked on. We price HMO common parts as ordinary rooms.

Does the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 change what I have to clean?

Not one line of it. Section 21 went on 1 May 2026 and every assured shorthold tenancy in England converted to a periodic one, so you can now give two months’ notice whenever you like. Your cleaning obligation is exactly what it was in April. What changed is timing: move-out dates are scattered through the year instead of clustering on fixed-term anniversaries, so the diary is less predictable and the good slots go earlier.

How long does a clean take in a Cranbrook cottage?

Longer than the same bedroom count in a modern house, because of the beams and the hearth. A two-bed weatherboarded cottage off Stone Street runs seven to nine hours with two cleaners. A three-bed on the newer edges of the town is nearer six or seven. We quote the price on the bedroom count, not the hours, so a slow cottage does not cost you more than a quick house.

Is this Cranbrook in Kent or the one near Ilford?

Kent. This page is the Wealden town in TN17, inside Tunbridge Wells borough, the one with the windmill and no railway station. There is another Cranbrook in Redbridge around IG1, and a third in Devon. We cover the Redbridge one as well, but it is a different page and a different team, so give the postcode when you ring and there is no confusion.

What do you do about beams and lime plaster?

Dry work, by hand. A dry microfibre along the top edge of the oak, a soft brush on the plaster, and nothing wet or sprayed anywhere near a lime panel. A glass-cleaner spray on lime plaster lifts the surface and dries milky, which turns a dust problem into a repair problem. If your cottage has exposed frame, say so when you book and we send a team that has done it before.

Do you cover Sissinghurst, Benenden, Frittenden and Goudhurst?

Yes, the whole of TN17. Cranbrook and Sissinghurst are the centre of it, and we work out to Benenden, Frittenden, Goudhurst and the lanes in between. Rural addresses are fine. Tell us where the gate is and whether a long-wheelbase van will get down the track, because that is the only thing that ever catches us out here.

What happens if the clerk fails something?

Tell us inside 48 hours and we come back and put it right at no charge, provided the property is still as we left it and nobody has moved in. That is the 48-hour re-clean guarantee. It applies to cleaning, not to paint, wear, the landlord’s furniture or 400 years of settled colour in a lime-plaster wall. The guarantee is the reason people book us rather than the cheapest van.

Do I need to be at the property?

No. A key safe or a set left with the agent works fine, and most of our Cranbrook jobs run that way because the tenant is already on the road. We photograph every room before and after and email the set with the invoice, so you have the evidence pack whether you were there or not.

What if the landlord disputes the deduction anyway?

Take it to the scheme. Whichever of the three protects your money will adjudicate, and our dated photographs, itemised invoice and re-clean record are all admissible. A tenant with a full professional paper trail rarely loses that argument. Shelter’s deposit guidance walks through the steps in plain English if you have not done it before.

Get a price

Booking takes three steps

Your postcode and the property. The form gives the price.
A date that suits you. Seven days a week.
We confirm it with you by phone or WhatsApp.