Two Cockroaches, Two Parts of the Same Willesden House
It is worth working out which one you have before doing anything else, because the two species occupy different parts of a building and arrive by completely different routes.
Oriental Cockroaches in Cellars and Drains
The Oriental cockroach is the large, very dark one, up to about two and a half centimetres, slow on its feet and poor at climbing smooth surfaces. It wants cool and damp rather than warm, and a Willesden cellar provides exactly that: brick or bare earth underfoot, a gully outside the door, and Victorian drainage that has been patched more than once. From there it reaches a lower-ground or back-addition kitchen through the hole round a waste pipe, under a cellar hatch or up an unsealed soil stack. One sitting on a cellar step or beside a floor gully after dark is the usual picture.
German Cockroaches in a Warm Converted Kitchen
The German cockroach is far smaller, light brown with a pair of dark stripes behind the head, and it stays indoors where it is warm. In a converted Willesden house that means the fitted kitchen of a flat, often squeezed into a former back bedroom or a side-return extension, with a boiler cupboard, an integrated fridge and boxed pipework behind the units. It does not wander in from the garden; it is carried in with boxes, an appliance or belongings, or comes through from a neighbouring flat. The guide comparing the two species puts them side by side.
How Old Plumbing Links the Flats
Converting a house into flats means new kitchens and bathrooms stacked on pipework that was never planned for them. Waste pipes get threaded up through existing floors and boxed into the chimney alcoves, fresh runs are chased through party walls, and the gaps around them are filled loosely or left open. Those channels stay dry and warm and lead from one home into the next, which is why something starting in a basement kitchen can show up two floors higher. How cockroaches move between flats goes into it, and it is why affected flats in one building are better booked close together than one after another.
Signs Worth Checking Tonight
- Insects scattering for cover when the kitchen or cellar light goes on
- Droppings like coarse ground pepper along the back of a worktop or on a cellar step
- Dark, capsule-shaped egg cases behind the fridge, in the sink cupboard or in a crack in cellar brickwork
- A stale, oily smell in a cupboard where nothing has been spilled
- Shed skins in the narrow gap behind a kitchen plinth
The signs guide takes each of those in turn, and where cockroaches hide in kitchens is worth reading before you start hauling appliances out. Tiny insects moving in a line along a worktop are much more likely to be ants in Willesden, and a small rounded beetle on a windowsill in spring is probably a carpet beetle.
What to Do Before You Book
Where Oriental cockroaches are concerned, damp matters as much as food, so deal with the dripping tap, the weeping gully and the cellar corner that never dries. Keep dry goods and pet food in sealed containers, empty the kitchen bin before bed, and stop stacking cardboard in cupboards or under the cellar stairs. Leave shop sprays and foggers on the shelf: they scatter cockroaches into wall voids and towards the flat next door without touching the source.
Booking and What Happens Around the Visit
Tell us whether it is a whole house, a flat in a converted house or a flat over a High Road shop, whether there is a cellar or a lower-ground room, and where the sightings have been. Emptying the cupboards under the sink and beside the cooker lets those spaces be reached. Eggs laid beforehand can still hatch afterwards and disturbed insects are more visible for a while, which this guide explains; how long the whole thing takes depends on the building and how far matters had gone. Come back to us if sightings continue past the period we give you.
Shops and Cafés on Willesden Green High Road
The parade along the High Road has flats over shops and cafés, and any business with a kitchen is quoted per site rather than at the flat or house price, because the premises, the storage and the trading hours all differ. Food businesses have legal duties to keep pests away from food, so a sighting needs acting on promptly. Call to describe the premises, and say whether there are flats above.
Keeping Them Out Afterwards
Once the cockroaches have been dealt with, fill the gaps around waste and heating pipes under the sink and behind the boiler, cover an open gully by the cellar door, and keep the cellar as dry and clear as the building allows. A broken drain under an old house is a drainage contractor's job rather than a pest control one, and worth putting right because rats use the same fault; see rat control in Willesden. How to prevent cockroaches returning has more, and Cockroach Control Brent covers the borough. Nobody should feel awkward about ringing, either, since cockroaches are not a verdict on housekeeping.
