I’m Paul, and I’m in Airdrie town centre most weeks — I’ve been cleaning windows round North Lanarkshire since 2016. The Victoria and Town Centre Conservation Area covers a big part of the middle of Airdrie, and almost everything inside it is built from the same three things: sandstone, Scottish slate and painted timber sash and case windows. That combination rules out half of what a general cleaner might do to a house, and it makes one job — keeping the water moving — matter far more than it does elsewhere in town.
The council’s own appraisal names your gutters
This is the part most people never read. North Lanarkshire Council’s 2025 appraisal of the Victoria and Town Centre Conservation Area sets out the small details that give the area its character, and warns that “the loss of one detail may not make a substantial difference but the loss of many will.”
Then it lists them. The very first items on that list:
“Important details include: external guttering, pipework and finials.”
Your rainwater goods are not treated as plumbing here. They are named, in a planning document, as part of what makes the street worth protecting.
Threat number one is not vandalism
The same document identifies four underlying threats to Airdrie’s historic fabric. I expected the usual suspects. The first one on the list is:
“General lack of good quality annual maintenance checks and repairs.”
The third is “building fabric which is approaching the end of its life.”
So the council’s position, in writing, is that the biggest single danger to these buildings is that nobody looks at them once a year. That is a fairly unusual thing for a window cleaner to be able to point at, and it is the honest reason I push annual gutter checks in the town centre harder than anywhere else on my round.
Buff sandstone, bargeboards and a drum tower
Victoria Place is villas — mostly buff sandstone, set back in mature tree-lined gardens front and back, with decorative gateposts and railings. The appraisal singles out decorative bargeboards as a common and appealing feature, and picks out The Anchorage for its drum tower, conical roof, and cast-iron cresting and finial.
Round the corner, Arthur Avenue is smaller detached houses, still with timber sash and case windows and slate roofs. Kennedy Drive is mostly red sandstone, or buff with red quoins. On Wellwynd there are still original and restored weavers’ cottages, rendered, with tiled roofs. The library is cream ashlar sandstone on a grey granite base. There are 58 listed buildings in this ward alone.
Five different stone and finish combinations within a ten-minute walk. They do not all want the same treatment.
What a pure water pole can and can’t do here
It can do the glass and the frames. Pure water and a pole suit painted timber sash and case windows well — no detergent sitting on the paint, no ladder leaning on the stonework or on a cast-iron gutter.
It should not be turned on the stone. Sandstone is porous. Pressure forces water into the wall and takes the surface with it. If a buff sandstone frontage genuinely needs cleaning, that is a job for a stone conservation specialist and a written method, not a cleaner with a lance. I will tell you that rather than take the money.
The gutters are where the real damage starts. Mature trees front and back mean leaf fall, and north-facing Scottish slate grows moss that slides down into the gutter and packs solid. An overflowing gutter runs down sandstone and over the sills of timber windows, and that is what rots them — not the rain itself.
Gutters are cleared by hand so the compacted silt and moss come out, not just the loose leaves on top. Where a roof is too high or the access is too tight for a ladder to be safe, I use vacuum poles from the ground instead. Same price either way. On a villa with decorative bargeboards and finials, that matters: there is nothing to lean against that you would want to lean against.
What it costs around the town centre
A small terraced house is £10 and a three-bed semi is £12. The large villas on Victoria Place and the surrounding streets are a different job and start from £50.
Gutters are from £25 per side. A two-sided semi is from £50; a villa with four runs is from £100. Fixed price agreed before I start, and nothing to pay until the work is done.
One person, one visit, one bill — and you get me every time, which on a street of five different stone types is the point.
What people round Victoria Place ask me
Do I need planning permission to get my windows cleaned?
No. Cleaning is maintenance, not development. Permission comes in when you alter or replace something. The conservation area rules are the reason to maintain rather than replace, not a reason to leave things alone.
Can you clean the sandstone while you’re here?
Not with pressure, no. Porous stone and pressure washers do not mix. I will clean the glass, the frames and the rainwater goods, and tell you honestly if the stone needs a specialist.
My gutters are cast iron. Will you still do them?
Yes, and carefully. Old cast-iron guttering is one of the details the appraisal asks people to keep, and it does not take kindly to a ladder hooked over it. That is usually a job I do from the ground.
How often should a town centre villa be checked?
Once a year as a minimum, and that is not me talking — that is the council naming missing annual checks as the number one threat to these buildings. With mature trees front and back, twice a year is reasonable.
Getting a price in the town centre
Send a photo and your postcode and I’ll come back the same day, usually within a few hours. Call or text 07440347383, or email contact@clearskyscotland.co.uk.
More on window cleaning across Airdrie and gutter clearing. Just east of here, I’ve written about what the conservation area in Drumgelloch means for your windows.
Where the quotes come from: North Lanarkshire Council, Airdrie Victoria and Town Centre Conservation Area Appraisal and Management Plan (30 January 2025), prepared by Smith Scott Mullan Associates.