Home / Locations / Hertfordshire / Stevenage / Bedwell and the town centre
Yes, Yikes Car Wash now covers Bedwell and the centre of Stevenage: the first estate the New Town built, the flats and conversions around the station and Lytton Way, and the streets east of the town centre as far as Fairlands Way. We clean cars where they are parked: at the kerb on Bedwell's 1950s terraces, in the courts behind the flats, in the new Green Street permit zone and on the drives off Sish Lane. Book online, pick a two hour window, and a vetted local washer from the Yikes Network arrives with water, power and kit.
Book your washKey facts
Parking reality
Bedwell was the first neighbourhood of the New Town to be built, occupied from 1952, and an aerial photograph from March that year shows it and Monks Wood rising out of the fields. It was planned for a town where the car was a luxury: terraces with a footpath at the front, garages in blocks, a neighbourhood centre on Bedwell Crescent. The town centre next to it was the first purpose built traffic free shopping precinct in Britain, opened by the Queen in 1959 and inspired by the Lijnbaan in Rotterdam.
Seventy years on the centre is the busiest parking ground in Stevenage, and the council has started to zone it. The Green Street, Ivel Road and Woolners Way permit area, zone GS, came into force on 5 January 2026, Monday to Saturday from 8.30am to 5.30pm, for vehicles up to 3,500kg. Permits are £68 a year for a first paper permit, £62 virtual, rising to £94 and £120 for a second and third, with visitor vouchers at £20 for twenty, and no household can hold more than three. Elsewhere, Bedwell is one of the areas where civil enforcement officers now issue £70 penalties for parking on verges and footways.
In January 2026 the council signed a development agreement with Muse, backed by Homes England and L&G, for the roughly £1bn Station Gateway: at least 1,000 homes, a rebuilt station and about 50,000 square metres of other development. Work on the Oval began on 30 January 2026, and the old 1970s indoor market is being turned into a North Herts College campus after the market moved to Boston House. Years of site traffic and dust on the cars parked around the centre are the practical result.
What the centre does to a car
A car parked in the middle of Stevenage lives on brake dust from Lytton Way and Fairlands Way, diesel soot from the bus interchange that opened beside the Gordon Craig in June 2022, and the droppings of a town centre's worth of pigeons, which etch a clear coat within days in warm weather. Add construction dust from the Station Gateway and the Oval, and a car that is never washed goes grey quickly.
A regular outside wash every few weeks takes it all off before it marks. Your washer rinses before anything touches the paint, works in the court or at the kerb where the car stands, and photographs it before and after, so you can see the difference from your flat.
How it works
Local life
Britain's first traffic free precinct, a church built from one pour of concrete, a theatre with fifty years of pantomime and a station that moved. These are the places that shape a week here.
Opened by the Queen in 1959, the first purpose built traffic free shopping zone in Britain, with the clock tower and ornamental pool at its heart and Franta Belsky's Joyride, a mother and child, nearby.
Source: Wikipedia: Stevenage
The largest parish church built in England since the war, its frame made from a single continuous pour of concrete, with twelve Purbeck marble columns round the altar and Normandy pebble on the walls. The Queen Mother laid the foundation stone in 1956. Stevenage Museum has been in its crypt since 1976.
Source: Wikipedia: Stevenage
A 501 seat theatre on Lytton Way, opened in 1975 and named for the theatre designer born less than a mile away. It marked fifty years of pantomime in November 2025 with the show it started with, Dick Whittington. This winter's listings run from Christmas in Ireland on 15 November to That'll Be Christmas on 19 December.
The present station opened on 23 July 1973, 1,500 metres south of the original 1850 one and 200 metres from the new centre. The Hertford Loop and the East Coast Main Line part just south of it, and LNER trains run through to York, Leeds and Edinburgh.
The aerial photograph of 14 March 1952 shows Bedwell and Monks Wood under construction, the first two neighbourhoods of the first New Town, on what had been farmland and woodland.
Source: Britain from Above: development of Bedwell and Monkswood, Stevenage, 1952
2026 marks 80 years since Stevenage became Britain's first New Town. The Mayor's birthday show is at the Gordon Craig on 11 November, the New Town lights are switched on at the Island on 21 November, and Kidzone follows on 5 December.
Bedwell ward had 8,055 people in 3,421 households at the 2021 Census, and it is the least car dependent part of Stevenage: 66 percent of households have a car, against 80 percent across the borough, and only 24 percent have two or more. Thirty eight percent of homes are flats, 3 percent are detached, and fewer than half are owner occupied, with a third rented from the council or a housing association and a fifth privately. The cars that are here live at the kerb, in courts and in allocated bays, which is exactly where we wash them.
More on this: how a wash works on a permit street and why bird droppings damage paint.
See it in action
Yikes Car Wash live on GB News: washing cars through the hosepipe ban. The video loads from YouTube only when you press play.
See the latest washes. Before and afters, new areas and the team on the road, on our Instagram.
@yikescarwash on InstagramPopular in Bedwell
The quick outside wash for a car in a court or at the kerb.
The End of Lease clean, inside and out, for handing a car back.
What's on locally
Updated 25 October 2026
Bedwell questions
We check local details against council, TfL and other official sources before we publish them. Parking rules change, so always check the sign at your bay.
Pop in your SG1 postcode, pick a window, and leave the rest to us.
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