Sandstone cleaning in Kensington

Kensington sits between Randwick Racecourse and Moore Park, and much of its character comes from UNSW's main campus and the racing industry. Anzac Parade is the main road, carrying a shopping strip and, since 2020, the light rail. Seven in ten occupied homes are flats or apartments, about a fifth are separate houses, and the rest are semis and townhouses. The old WD and HO Wills tobacco factory site became the Raleigh Park neighbourhood. On the hill above West Kensington stands the Sacred Heart Monastery of 1895, a large Gothic stone building with a central tower, and Kensington Public School on Doncaster Avenue is heritage-listed. Stone appears as apartment fences, steps and paths, and as walls and steps on older houses.

In a suburb this dense, most stone problems come from use rather than weather. Apartment entries carry heavy foot traffic, bins and bikes, and the common paths between blocks are often shaded, damp and green. Anzac Parade frontages collect exhaust soot, gum and spills, and building sites along the light rail corridor have added dust and cement splashes to neighbouring paving. Older stone in West Kensington and around the monastery has a different set of issues: lichen and mould under mature trees, efflorescence where ground moisture rises into low walls, and joints that have been patched with harder cement over the years. Salt from the ocean is a minor factor here (inferred from setting).

Kensington is in Randwick City Council, and three of Randwick's twenty-one heritage conservation areas carry names linked to the suburb: West Kensington, Sacred Heart, and the Old Tote and Fig Tree Theatre group at UNSW. For a house inside West Kensington, or one on the council's heritage schedule, the heritage clause of the local plan (5.10) usually means a development application, unless Randwick agrees in writing beforehand that the work is small-scale upkeep. That matters most for restoration, repointing, coating removal or applying a sealer that changes the look of the stone. In apartment buildings the shared stone sits with the owners corporation, which is obliged to keep it in repair, and any change beyond repair needs a special resolution of owners.

Kensington is about 18 minutes from Double Bay, across through Paddington and Moore Park or via Randwick. Anzac Parade has limited stopping, so for frontage jobs we arrange a side-street space, a building's driveway or a loading zone before the day. In apartment buildings, we coordinate with the building manager on lift and power access, and avoid student move-in weeks where a block houses many university tenants. Entries are done in halves so nobody is locked out, with signs at each door. Older homes in West Kensington are approached with more time and gentler methods. Wash water everywhere is contained with mats and recovered with a wet vacuum, not left for the light rail corridor's drains.