Fournier Street runs through the Brick Lane and Fournier Street Conservation Area, first designated by Tower Hamlets in July 1969 as the Fournier Street Conservation Area and extended in 1978, 1998 and 2008, and its houses make up one of the best-preserved groups of early-Georgian town houses in Britain.
Most went up between 1725 and 1728 under building leases to local carpenters and builders, and many were soon occupied by master silk weavers and silk merchants, a good number of them Huguenots. Almost every surviving house is listed, nearly all at Grade II; the Rectory at No. 2 is Grade II*, next to the Grade I Christ Church.
We have cleaned the Fournier Street terraces and the wider Huguenot quarter – Wilkes, Princelet, Elder, Folgate, Hanbury – since 2014. Phone 0333 555 2076 or email office@monstercleaning.com. A 4-bed listed 1720s terrace clean starts at £425.
Last updated September 2026. Our Fournier Street crews cover all of E1 6, plus the E1 5 streets east of Brick Lane and the EC2A fringe up towards Shoreditch High Street and Liverpool Street. Most jobs can be booked within the week; for a four-bed listed house on Fournier itself we ask for two weeks’ notice. Every E postcode and neighbouring ward we work is on the Tower Hamlets end of tenancy hub.
Answer in one line: end of tenancy cleaning on Fournier Street starts at £156 for a studio flat in a converted upper floor and rises to £425 for a full 4-bed listed 1720s terrace, fixed price, listed-building care included.
We are a small London company. A job gets two to four cleaners, and the kit comes in by hand, because the old front doors here are narrow and stopping a van outside is awkward.
You get a fixed quote instead of an hourly bill, and before we leave the work is signed off against the 57-point agent-approved checklist. Over the years we have done handovers for 300+ letting agents and helped clients recover £1.2m in deposits, and the 48-hour re-clean guarantee stands behind every clean.
Why Fournier Street deposits get deducted
The ONS private rent figures put the Tower Hamlets average at £2,453 a month in August 2026, 3.5% higher than a year earlier, with one-beds at £1,992 and two-beds at £2,418. Fournier Street is an unusual place to rent. It was the last street built on the Wood-Michell estate and was called Church Street until it took the name of George Fournier, a Huguenot refugee; the Survey of London dates its building leases to 1725 on the north side and 1726 on the south.
Many of the houses have long been lived in by their owners. Gilbert and George have lived and worked on the street for many years, and Dennis Severs’ House is a short walk away at 18 Folgate Street. What does come up to let ranges from a converted flat above a shop at the Brick Lane end to a whole house.
The Tenant Fees Act 2019 caps a deposit at five weeks’ rent where the yearly rent is under £50,000, so on a whole house the sum held can run well into the thousands, and a missed step on original joinery is exactly where an agent will look to keep some of it back.
The fabric on Fournier is unusually intact for a London rental street. The houses were put up in the 1720s by local carpenter-builders, and many were soon occupied by master silk weavers, who worked their looms in the top storey for the light. On the north side the mansard garrets mostly keep their weather-boarded fronts with wide weavers’ windows.
Inside, a number of houses still have staircases with turned and twisted balusters, some under mahogany handrails, and panelled rooms on the ground and first floors. Several houses retain their early-Georgian lath-and-plaster ceilings on the first-floor parlour and upper drawing room, with original cornice runs. The flooring is wide-board oak or wide pine on the principal storeys. None of these features can be cleaned with anything aggressive.
Hard water is the other constant here. Thames Water takes about 65% of its supply from rivers and 35% from underground sources, and on the way it passes through chalky limestone, which is why E1 taps are hard.
Shower heads, mixer bases and kettles all carry a white crust by handover day if they have been in daily use. Our answer is a measured mild descaler, left to dwell for as long as it needs, then a rinse, a buff and a dry wipe so nothing streaks.
Renters’ Rights Act 2025 and the deposit lever
Section 21 is gone.
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 became law on 27 October 2025, and its main tenancy reforms have applied since 1 May 2026. Rolling periodic tenancies have replaced fixed-term assured shortholds, and Section 21 no-fault possession is gone. For a Fournier Street tenant the deposit itself works as before: it sits in one of the government-backed schemes, and any argument over deductions goes to that scheme’s adjudicator.
What has shifted is the weight of the paperwork around a move. With tenancies now open-ended, the agent’s check-out report is often the main record of how a listed house was handed back, so a clean that can be checked point by point against the check-in photographs is worth more than it used to be.
Tower Hamlets selective and additional licensing
Landlord licensing on this street has changed. The council’s selective licensing scheme covered Spitalfields and Banglatown ward, which takes in Fournier Street, along with Weavers and Whitechapel from 1 October 2021, and it ended on 30 September 2026.
Tower Hamlets says there is no selective scheme in the borough from 1 October, though licences already granted stay valid until their own expiry dates, and it has commissioned stock modelling to inform any future scheme. Separately, additional HMO licensing covers the whole borough from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2029.
Listed-building consent and what it means at handover
Fournier Street is the highest-listed-density rental street we work. Listed-building consent is required for any work that affects the character of a listed building. Cleaning is not work that needs consent, but the clerk’s check-out report assumes the cleaner knows what is original and what is replacement and has not damaged either.
We do not strip original paint chemically, we do not steam lath-and-plaster ceilings, we do not wet-mop wide-board oak, we do not chemically clean original glazing, and we do not touch the lead flashing on the silk-weavers’ loft skylights past a soft brush and a dry cloth. The clerks know the protocol; we work to it.
The lath-and-plaster ceiling dry-pass
This is the line item that defines Fournier Street more than any other category. The first-floor parlours and upper drawing rooms in the 1720s terraces still carry their original lath-and-plaster ceilings, often with the original cornice run and centre rose intact. Lath-and-plaster reacts badly to water and to vibration.
A standard ceiling clean uses a damp microfibre on a telescopic pole, which fails this test on both counts: the water swells the plaster behind the cracks, the pressure of the pole tip flexes the lath. We do a slow dry-pass instead – long-haired natural-bristle brush, no contact pressure on the plaster, dust drawn onto a flat tray held below, then a soft natural-bristle brush along the cornice run with the same no-contact protocol.
On a Fournier 4-bed it is most of the morning’s work on the principal storeys before any of the rest of the kitchen and bathroom scope can start. Done from cold it takes around three hours per principal floor. Done as a quick wipe with a damp cloth it cracks the plaster, the clerk catches it on the check-out walk, and the deduction lands on the listed-fabric line of the inventory.
Coverage – streets and zones around Fournier Street
End of tenancy cleaning
from £156
For a studio, fixed by property size, agreed before we start.
Get your price0333 555 2076 · 8am to 7pm
Our Fournier Street crews also take the surrounding E1 6 streets, grouped as below. Most sit inside the Brick Lane and Fournier Street Conservation Area; Elder Street and Folgate Street belong to the neighbouring Elder Street Conservation Area. Listed-building care applies on most of these jobs. What changes as you move away from Christ Church is the mix of whole houses, flats over shops and warehouse conversions.
- Fournier Street – the run from Commercial Street past Christ Church Spitalfields to Brick Lane, lined with listed early-Georgian terraces, nearly all at Grade II, with weavers’ garrets, panelled rooms and lath-and-plaster ceilings.
- Wilkes Street – 1720s Huguenot weavers’ houses, mostly Grade II listed, often let as upper-floor apartments above ground-floor commercial use.
- Princelet Street – built from about 1705 and first called Princes Street; No. 13 dates from 1718-19.
- Folgate Street – Grade II listed weavers’ terrace including 18 (Dennis Severs’ House); narrow plots, four-storey-plus-attic format.
- Elder Street – small early-Georgian terrace pocket begun around 1722, the core of the neighbouring Elder Street Conservation Area, with its listed houses all at Grade II.
- Hanbury Street – mix of Huguenot stock at the western end and warehouse loft conversions further east towards Brick Lane.
- Brick Lane corner – where Fournier Street meets Brick Lane by the mosque built in 1743 as a Huguenot church, with studios and one-beds above the shops.
- Christ Church Spitalfields side – the listed houses at the church end of Fournier Street, beside the Grade II* Rectory at No. 2.
- Puma Court – the cobbled cut-through between Commercial Street and Wilkes; small almshouse-era cottages, several converted.
- E1 6 in full, with a short stretch of Brick Lane below Hanbury Street and the Commercial Street frontage by the church and the Ten Bells.
What’s included in our Fournier Street end of tenancy clean
Our 57-point agent-approved checklist splits into the four areas below. The scope stays the same between a four-bed listed house on Fournier and an upper-floor flat on Wilkes Street; only the hours differ.
Kitchen
We pull out the cooker, the fridge and the washing machine where the pipework allows, and clean the floor and wall behind each. The hood filter comes out, is degreased on its own and dried before it goes back.
The oven, booked as an add-on from £31, is done inside, outside and behind if it is built in, including the inner pane of the door glass where the door allows, since clerks lift the seal to look and often find grease. Hob, splashback and the grout around them are scrubbed. Cupboards are cleaned inside and out and the tops of the wall units dusted.
Sink and taps get a mild acid soak, then the chrome is dried and polished. The bin is emptied, washed and deodorised, and the floor mopped under anything that moves. In these houses the kitchen is usually a later addition, but where an original feature survives, such as an old range surround or a bread oven door in a basement kitchen, we treat it as listed fabric and clean it dry.
Bathrooms
Grout is scrubbed back, including the inner corner of the shower enclosure where mould starts. The shower head comes off, is descaled and goes back on. Glass screens are treated and rinsed until the white bloom has gone and no film is left.
We clean:
- the toilet bowl
- the outside of the cistern
- the pedestal and the floor beneath it
- mirrored cabinets inside and out
- the extractor grille
Then we finish the floor. We do not re-tile or replace sealant. Failed silicone is a maintenance matter for the landlord and should not land on you as a cleaning charge.
Bedrooms and living areas
Skirting is wiped and picture rails dusted, since a line of dust along a rail shows up in low afternoon light. Original lath-and-plaster ceilings get a dry pass only, with no water. Cornices and any surviving ceiling roses get a dry soft-bristle brush.
Panelling in the front rooms is wiped with a barely damp microfibre and dried at once, without detergent. Old oak and pine boards are dry-buffed and never wet-mopped. Windows are cleaned on the inside, early glass included, using distilled water and microfibre, and frames and reveals are wiped. Any carpet is vacuumed.
Throughout
Every door is wiped on both faces along with its frame. Old ironmongery such as hinges, rim locks and brass escutcheons is cleaned with a dry soft cloth only. Switches, sockets, thermostats and any entry-phone handset are wiped and radiators dusted.
Where the long weavers’ windows survive in the garret, we dust the reveals. The staircase handrail and the turned and twisted balusters are cleaned to handover standard. Bins are emptied, and the 57 points come itemised on the receipt we email that evening.
What it costs along Fournier Street
Every job on the Fournier terrace is a listed-building job, and the main rooms each need a slow dry pass before normal cleaning can start. Even so, each price covers the full service: a fixed quote, the 57-point agent-approved checklist and the 48-hour re-clean guarantee. There is no separate listed-building charge.
| Property | Price | Typical hours |
|---|---|---|
| Studio (converted upper floor) | £156 | 3-4 |
| 1-bed flat above commercial | £207 | 5-6 |
| 2-bed listed apartment | £243 | 7-8 |
| 3-bed listed terrace | £339 | 9-11 |
| 4-bed listed Georgian terrace | £425 | 14-18 (split across two days) |
| 5-bed listed terrace | Quoted on inspection | 20-24 (split across two days) |
| Single oven add-on | £31 | included in main |
| Double oven add-on | £62 | included in main |
| two bedrooms and a living room shampoo | £94 | 1-2 extra |
Carpet shampoo is £29 a bedroom where carpet is fitted, which on Fournier is usually just the back bedrooms, since the main floors tend to be bare boards. A living-room carpet is £36 and a 90cm range cooker £62.
If you only need part of the property cleaned, it is £30 per cleaner per hour. The ceiling dry pass and the rest of the listed-building work on the main floors is in the headline figure; charging extra for going slowly would not sit right with us.
What your Fournier Street letting agent will actually check
This list is built from the check-out feedback we get back from letting agents and the inventory clerks who do most of the Fournier and Huguenot terrace walks. Order matters. Top of the list is what gets failed most often.
- Lath-and-plaster ceiling cornice dust on the first-floor parlour and upper drawing room – the Fournier signature failure
- Dust on the mouldings of the panelled front parlour, caught round the edge of each raised field
- Dust where the floorboards meet the skirting, especially where furniture stood against the wall
- Original weavers’ windows in the garret – dust on the inside of the long panes
- Quarter-turn staircase mahogany handrail and barley-twist balusters – finger-mark gloss along the upper edge
- Original 1720s window putty and the inside reveal of the early-Georgian sash heads – distilled water on the glass, dry on the putty
- Centre rose dust in the upper drawing room
- Old ironmongery – hinges, rim locks and brass keyhole escutcheons
- In basement kitchens, any surviving bread oven door or iron range surround
- Lead flashing dust on the silk-weavers’ loft skylight – soft brush only
- Limescale on kitchen and bathroom chrome, which hard Thames Water brings back fast
- Oven inner-glass grease between the panes
- Light fittings, inside the glass bowl of a pendant as well as the shade
End of tenancy versus deep clean versus regular
Three different jobs share the word clean. A move-out clean is built for the handover: the agent’s checklist, photographs as evidence and the aim of getting the deposit back. A deep clean is for staying on, when you want the kitchen and bathroom brought back to the state they were in on first letting.
Regular cleaning is weekly or fortnightly upkeep. This page is about the first. On Fournier, care of the lath-and-plaster ceilings, the panelling and the old boards is part of the move-out price.
| Type | When you book it | Listed-fabric care | Deposit-return target |
|---|---|---|---|
| End of tenancy | Moving out | Yes – included | Yes – the whole point |
| Deep clean | Staying, refresh | Yes – on request | No |
| Regular | Weekly or fortnightly | No – light scope | No |
How booking works
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.
0333 555 2076 · 8am to 7pm
- Ring or email with the address, the number of bedrooms, the listing grade if you have it (if not, we look it up), and the date and time of the handover.
- We reserve the date and send a written quote that lists all 57 points. For a listed house we ask for a few photos first, so we know which original features the crew will be working around.
- Where access allows, the crew arrives ninety minutes before the agent’s check-out slot. For a listed house of four bedrooms or more split across two days, we start at opening time on the first morning.
- The same evening you get a receipt with photos of the finished kitchen, bathroom and original features, ready to forward to the agent.
- Should the clerk raise anything within 48 hours, a crew returns at no cost under our re-clean guarantee.
Related services and neighbouring areas
If the oven in a converted upper-floor flat or the basement kitchen of a listed house needs serious work, our oven cleaning service handles it. Where the back bedrooms of a four-bed house are carpeted, book the carpet cleaning service alongside.
Close by, we run the same booking pattern along Commercial Street, the main road on the west side of the conservation area, and the Tower Hamlets end of tenancy hub lists every other E postcode we cover.
Frequently asked questions
How much does end of tenancy cleaning cost on Fournier Street?
Prices on the street are fixed: £156 for a studio on a converted upper floor, £207 for a one-bed above a shop, £243 for a two-bed listed flat and £339 for a three-bed listed house. A four-bed listed house from the 1720s is £425, and a five-bed or larger listed house is quoted on inspection. Each price includes the dry pass on the lath-and-plaster ceilings in the main rooms and the soft-brush work on cornices and panelling.
How long does the clean take?
Two cleaners usually need five to six hours for a one-bed conversion on an upper floor and nine to eleven for a three-bed listed house. A four-bed listed house on Fournier itself takes fourteen to eighteen hours, so we normally spread it over two days. Most of that extra time is ceiling work: the dry pass takes around three hours on each main floor, and the kitchen and bathroom cannot start until it is done.
Do you guarantee my deposit back?
No firm can promise that, because the deposit sits between you, the landlord and the scheme, and the clerk makes the call on condition. What we do promise is a clean against the 57-point agent-approved checklist and a 48-hour re-clean guarantee, so if the clerk flags a cleaning point in that time we come back without charge. Across the firm we have helped tenants recover £1.2m in deposits.
Are you insured?
Yes. We carry public liability cover, and our policy includes work in Grade II and Grade II* listed buildings. Ask and we will email the certificate before the job.
Do I need to be there?
No. On most Fournier and Wilkes Street jobs we collect keys from the agent the evening before. A four-bed listed house usually starts at eight on day one and finishes on day two, which spares you living through the dust work. If your agent prefers another handover arrangement, let us know.
Do you bring all the cleaning products?
Everything comes with us: cloths and ladders, a long-haired natural-bristle brush for lath-and-plaster ceilings and a softer one for cornices and panelling, the dry-buff kit for old boards, distilled water for early glass, a mild descaler for chrome, and the oven and carpet equipment if you have booked those. Nothing you have left in the cupboards gets used.
Will you damage the lath-and-plaster ceiling on the first-floor parlour?
No. Lath-and-plaster reacts badly to water and to vibration. We do not use a damp cloth, a steam cleaner or pressure from a telescopic pole. The dry-pass uses a long-haired natural-bristle brush with no contact pressure, dust drawn onto a flat tray below, then a soft brush along the cornice run with the same protocol.
Will the wide-board oak floor be wet-mopped?
No. Old oak boards are only ever dry-buffed. Water on early Georgian boards dulls the patina, swells the joints and can run through to the ceiling of the basement below. We buff the boards, wipe the edges by hand where furniture stood and finish with a soft cloth, because agents often walk these floors in afternoon light and any smear shows.
What about the original 1720s glazing?
Distilled water and a microfibre cloth go on the old glass, and no water goes near the putty. Some of the putty in these windows is very old, and scraping or soaking it is the quickest way to cause damage a clerk will notice.
What if my landlord uses a specific inventory company?
Tell us the firm when you book. Inventory companies each use their own check-out template, and we set the order and emphasis of the kitchen, bathroom and main-floor work to match the one your agent’s clerk will follow.
Can you clean a property while it’s still partly furnished?
We can, though it takes longer, so mention it at booking if the sofa, wardrobes or bed will still be there. We move what can be moved safely on the main floors, taking care over the old boards, clean round anything that stays, and still cover every point on the agent’s checklist.
Do you cover Wilkes Street, Princelet Street and Elder Street as well?
Yes. The whole Brick Lane and Fournier Street Conservation Area is on our standard rota, and so is the neighbouring Elder Street Conservation Area: Fournier, Wilkes, Princelet, Elder, Folgate, Hanbury and the Brick Lane corner. Most of the early-Georgian houses on these streets are listed, nearly all at Grade II, and the listed-building protocol applies on every job.
What about hard water on chrome shower fittings and kettles?
Yes. Thames Water’s supply is hard because it passes through chalky limestone, and in E1 that means chrome, kettles and shower fittings scale up quickly. We apply a measured mild descaler, give it time to work, then buff and dry-wipe until the chrome looks newly fitted. The kettle inside and out, the base of the mixer tap and the washing-machine drawer all get the same treatment.
What’s the 48-hour re-clean guarantee?
If the clerk raises a cleaning point within 48 hours of our finishing, we return and deal with it at no extra charge; the clock starts when we hand the keys back to you. That evening you also receive dated photographs and our completed checklist, which go straight into the evidence if a dispute reaches the Tenancy Deposit Scheme, mydeposits or the DPS. Shelter has free guidance on challenging a cleaning deduction.
How quickly can you book me in?
Most converted flats and smaller listed flats can be booked within the week. For a four-bed listed house on Fournier we ask for two weeks, because the job runs over two days with a crew that already knows the street. Month-end weekends are our busiest dates here, and handovers on dates like 31 March or 30 June fill up earliest, so for one of those give us three weeks.
Do you handle properties under Tower Hamlets selective licensing?
Yes. Spitalfields and Banglatown ward, which includes Fournier Street, was in the council’s selective licensing scheme until it ended on 30 September 2026; Tower Hamlets says there is no selective scheme for now, and licences already issued run to their own end dates. Borough-wide additional HMO licensing continues to 31 March 2029. Our checklist clean is built to meet a licence’s good-order conditions at handback.
Can you do listed-building work on Grade II* properties, such as the Rectory at the church end of Fournier?
Yes. The same listed-building protocol applies as on Grade II: dry-pass on lath-and-plaster, soft natural-bristle brush on original cornicing and centre roses, no chemical contact on listed features, dry buff on the wide-board oak, distilled water on the original glazing. We do not do anything that needs listed-building consent (we are cleaners, not builders) and we will tell you if a feature is past the point of cleaning and into the territory of restoration.
Ready to book?
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.
0333 555 2076 · 8am to 7pm
Call 0333 555 2076 or write to office@monstercleaning.com with the address, number of bedrooms, handover date and time, and the name of the letting agent. We reserve the date and send a written quote, and the crew sets out from a London depot to arrive ninety minutes ahead of your check-out slot, or at opening time on day one if a four-bed-plus house is split over two days.
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