A job that's typical of the work around the city was a small one-bedroom council bungalow out at Keynsham, BS31. Modest on paper, but there was more to it than four walls: a little garden shed to empty, an under-counter fridge indoors and a separate freezer out in the shed, and the carpets to lift and take away as well. We cleared the lot in a day. That's a fair snapshot of house clearance in Bristol — often a smaller property, but with a shed, some white goods and the carpets adding up to more than the room count suggests.
A city built on hills
Anyone who's lived in Bristol knows the first thing that shapes a clearance here: the hills. Totterdown, parts of Clifton, the streets climbing out of the centre. A sofa that would walk straight out on the flat becomes a proper carry up or down a steep terrace, and the parking is often on a slope with a permit on top. It's not a complaint, it's just something we factor in. Tell us where the property sits and how the street works, and we'll bring the right number of hands and the right van. A tight Georgian terrace up in Clifton and a post-war semi out in Brislington are two very different days.
Clifton, the terraces and the student lets
A lot of Bristol's older housing is handsome Georgian and Victorian terrace, and a good share of it is now flats. That means a clearance is often a floor or two up a communal stair with no lift. We've cleared flats and whole houses across the BS8 Clifton streets and the BS6 and BS7 terraces of Redland and Bishopston. Those same streets are heavy with student lets. A good bit of house clearance in Bristol is a landlord or agent needing a shared house emptied between one academic year and the next: furniture in every room, a garden nobody's touched since autumn, and a tight turnaround before the new tenants arrive. The carry is usually where the day is decided in that kind of property. Tell us the floor, the lift or lack of one, and where the van can sit, and the figure comes back tighter.
The cellars nobody mentions
One thing that's particular to Bristol: the cellars. So many of the older terraces have one, and it's forever where the real volume turns out to be hiding — the previous three owners' paint tins, a dismantled bed frame, boxes gone soft with damp. On the hillier streets the cellar sometimes has its own door round the side, which helps, and sometimes it's a carry back up through the house, which doesn't. Either way it's worth mentioning when you ask us to quote, because a house that reads as a two-bed on the particulars can have a fourth room's worth of stuff down below that the photos never showed.
A three-bedroom semi in Shirehampton, BS11
December 2024, out on the western edge of the city where Bristol runs down towards the Avon. A three-bedroom semi-detached house in Shirehampton, BS11, empty and in a poor way. The person arranging it was living abroad and had been over to see the place not long before writing to us, so the enquiry arrived with photographs and a room-by-room description attached — the best start a job of this sort can have. The instruction was one line and covered the lot: "Everything is to be removed if possible, including carpets etc." Several of the rooms, they thought, read more like the verminous clearance page on our website than an ordinary house clearance. They offered to arrange a visit if we needed one. We didn't. The photographs told us plenty.
The booking form carried one request we'd never had put to us in quite those words:
> could your team empty out - and put back! - the water containers catching water from a roof leak in the front bedroom next to the bathroom?
A leak coming through into the front bedroom, next to the bathroom, and a row of containers on the floorboards catching it. The room had to be emptied around them, and the containers had to go back. The house was going to stand a while yet before a builder could be got to the roof, and nobody wanted the water landing on bare boards. So that is what the team did. Containers out, room cleared to the walls, carpet up, containers back in the same spots before the door was closed on it.
The rest was a full clearance: three bedrooms, the reception rooms, the kitchen, carpets up throughout and away with everything else. The bathroom we left as it stood — there was a toilet to come out and water damage to make good, and that was a plumber and a builder's work, not a clearance team's. Photographs of the empty rooms went off the same day, which for someone in another country is the whole of what they can see of it.
Probate work and the Bristol solicitors
Quite a lot of what we do in the BS postcodes is estate work, and a good deal of it reaches us through solicitors in the city handling a probate rather than through the family direct. We're easy to deal with on that footing: the estate is invoiced, the solicitor copied in, nothing paid up front. On the ground it means the same care either way. Drawers and the tops of wardrobes gone through before a thing is lifted. Papers, photographs and anything that looks personal put aside for the executor. No rushing a room you have asked us to hold. If the family's not in Bristol, and they often aren't, we run the job on keys and send a set of empty-room photos once it's done. There's more on the probate house clearance page if you're an executor working at a distance.
Cluttered and hoarded house clearance in Bristol
Some of the calls we take are the difficult ones — a home lost under years of clutter, a hoarded house, a flat left in a state. Hoarder house clearance in Bristol is a regular part of our week, and so is the verminous end of it, and none of it fazes the team or earns a comment. Before the day we just want to know the plain facts — is there anything hazardous, any sign of vermin, any spoiled food — so the van comes stocked for it and we've allowed enough time. Then it's methodical, room by room, textiles bagged apart from the rest, and a careful eye kept out for the money, paperwork and small valuables that always seem to surface in that kind of clearance. People often ring half-apologising for the state of a place. There's really no need.
Other kinds of house clearance in Bristol
Flat clearance and end of tenancy clearance in Bristol
Most of our flat clearance work in Bristol is in converted houses rather than purpose-built blocks. A first- or second-floor flat in a Victorian conversion in BS6 or BS7, one narrow communal stair, and a front door onto a street that slopes. End of tenancy clearance in Bristol runs to a different rhythm. An agent or a landlord with a date to hit, a shared house in BS8 or BS5 to be emptied of beds, desks and mattresses, plus a kitchen four people have contributed to. Keys back the same afternoon. Give us the floor, the stair and where the van can stand and we'll send the right number of hands for it.
Garage and loft clearance in Bristol
Garage and loft clearance in Bristol is often what's left after the house itself has been dealt with. A garage nobody has opened since the car stopped fitting in it. A loft with the boxes from two moves ago still up there under the felt. We'll do a garage and loft on their own, without the house, and a single item on its own as well if that's genuinely all there is. If what you've got is a pile rather than a houseful, that's rubbish removal and we do that too.
What leaves the house, and where it goes
Sofas, beds and wardrobes; the fridge, the washer and the freezer; carpets and underlay; and whatever's been quietly filling the shed, the loft and the cellar. It might be a single room or the whole property. Whatever still has use in it goes round the charities and reuse projects nearby. The balance goes out through a licensed transfer station, documented as it should be, with waste transfer notes if you need them for a file. Our waste carrier's licence is CBDU419679. The only things we can't put on the van are paint, gas bottles and genuinely hazardous material — tell us if there's any about and we'll point you the right way.
Sheds, freezers and the garden end of it
As on the Keynsham bungalow, a Bristol clearance often comes with an outside half — a shed with a freezer humming away in it, a mower, bags of green waste, the usual. All of that goes on the same visit, and the shed itself too if it's reached the end of its life, provided you flag it when you book so we turn up with the tools and the time for it. A garden that's been left to itself while a probate went through is a common enough sight, and a tidy-up alongside the clearance is easily added if you say so at the start rather than on the day.
What the day itself looks like
Nine o'clock is the usual start, meeting you at the door or picking up a key. Don't bother boxing anything beforehand — the team works through cupboards, wardrobes and drawers as it comes to them, takes up carpets and underlay, sees to the shed and the cellar, and leaves the place swept behind them. Every room is photographed before and after for the record, which matters when whoever's arranged the job can't be on site. On Bristol's steeper streets that first walk round does double duty. It settles the access — the carry, the slope, the spot the van can actually stand — gets settled, and the access is half of what the price rests on here.
Around Bristol — the patch we cover
Bristol spreads across a lot of postcodes — BS3 for Bedminster and Southville, BS4 for Brislington and Knowle, BS5 for St George and Easton, BS6 for Redland and Cotham, BS7 for Bishopston and Horfield, BS8 for Clifton, Clifton Wood and Hotwells. Beyond the middle we're regularly out to BS11 for Avonmouth and Shirehampton, and across the boundary to BS31 for Keynsham and Saltford. Not sure if your postcode's on that list? Ask and we'll tell you straight.
The same vans go past the city boundary on the same days. If the house you're dealing with sits a little further out, there are pages of their own for house clearance in Yate up in South Gloucestershire, for house clearance in Clevedon out on the coast road, and for house clearance in Weston-super-Mare further down the Somerset side of the estuary.
Temple Meads keeps the city moving, but most of our work is out in the residential streets — the terraces and bungalows of a hilly, spread-out city where houses are forever changing hands and wanting emptying between one owner and the next.
Ring 0800 046 5555 and tell us what's there, or send photographs room by room through the form on this page, and we'll come back to you with a figure and a date.
Bristol house clearance — common questions
Why should I use you?
Because we've cleared houses and flats across Bristol since 2007, we're licensed and fully insured, and we'll give you a real figure on the phone rather than send someone round to sell to you. Steep streets, hard carries, probate — it's routine.
How much does a Bristol house clearance cost?
Every house is different, and a Bristol one more than most — the cellar and the carry see to that — so we'd rather look than guess. Ring 0800 046 5555 and talk us through it, or send photographs of each room through the form on this page, the cellar, loft and shed included. You'll have a proper figure the same conversation, and asking costs you nothing and commits you to nothing.
How and when do I pay?
After the work's done, by bank transfer, no deposit up front. Probate to the estate, and we'll copy your solicitor in if that helps. If you're not local, keys from an agent or neighbour and photos of the empty rooms at the end.
