The keys came from the neighbour two doors down. Ely sits up out of the Fens on its island of clay. The owner of the one-bed bungalow was driving over from Norwich that morning and knew she wouldn't make it for nine. She squared it with the neighbour instead and emailed us the arrangement the week before. Sheltered scheme, quiet corner of Ely, CB7, hard standing outside the front door and no restrictions on it. That last bit matters more than people think — we had the van doors open six feet from the threshold and never once had to walk a wardrobe across a car park.
Inside was a complete one-bedroom clear. Carpets up, curtains down, both had been asked for by name in the emails beforehand so nobody had to stand there guessing. The white goods went as well: electric cooker, washing machine, tumble dryer, and a small fridge freezer. The fridge freezer is the one that changes the day slightly. Anything with a cooling circuit has to be handled at a site set up to draw the gas off properly before the shell is crushed. It travels separately and it gets logged separately.
Then the shed, and the front and back gardens with it, which included a good stack of empty plant pots. The sort of thing that sounds like nothing until you count them and realise it's half a load on its own.
What we got wrong on one Ely house clearance, and what changed after it
Not every job here ends with a thank-you letter, and this one didn't. It was a whole-house clearance in Ely, two van loads' worth once the crew had walked it. The customer had been plain from the beginning about the order they wanted things done in. Their own words, written to us afterwards: "We asked that they prioritise room clearance and leave big electrical items such as the american fridge/freezer and washing machine." They had a local selling network and could pass the big electricals on themselves. Perfectly sensible, and a request we get most weeks.
It went wrong in three places. The team arrived later than they were booked for and were away before lunch. The garden tidy that had been agreed with the rest of the work never got started. And the American fridge freezer and the washing machine went out in the first load anyway, against the instruction. One seat cushion off the sofa went with them, which meant the sofa could no longer be given away as a complete thing. A piece of furniture in good condition ended up at the tip for want of a cushion. A return two days later for the second load was offered, agreed verbally, then called off the night before. Read back in one go, that is a poor day from end to end. The customer was right to say so.
What came out of it sits on every job sheet now. Anything that is to stay is written down as a list. Room by room, item by item — and it gets read back at the door before a single thing is lifted. Suites don't get split: if a sofa is going to a neighbour, a charity shop or a local selling page, the cushions travel with it or none of it moves. A deferred second load is booked as a date, in writing, on the day itself rather than promised in a doorway. And if the garden is part of the job, it's on the sheet as its own line so it can't quietly fall off the end of the morning. We'd rather set that out than pretend every house clearance in Ely has gone perfectly since 2007.
Clearing a house in Ely when you live two counties away
A good share of our house clearance work around Ely is arranged by somebody who won't be standing in the house on the day. The sheltered bungalow above is the ordinary shape of it: the owner coming down from Norwich, nine o'clock unrealistic, so the keys sat with a neighbour and everything else went by email. The date, the access, the carpets, the curtains, the four white goods named one by one, the shed, the pots in both gardens. We wrote the whole lot back in a single message and asked for it to be confirmed or corrected line by line. That's why nobody was standing in a hallway at half nine wondering whether the curtains were staying.
Same for executors in another county, landlords running a property from abroad. Families who have inherited a house they last stood in as teenagers. Photographs of the empty rooms go back the same day. The person dealing with it can see the state the place was left in without a four-hour round trip. The waste transfer note follows. Ask for either at any point and you'll get it.
Where we go around here
Ely sits in East Cambridgeshire and the postcodes fan out from the city in a way that catches people out. CB7 covers Ely itself and the villages hanging off it — Prickwillow, Queen Adelaide, Stuntney and Soham. CB6 takes in Witchford, Little Downham, Stretham and Littleport up towards the Norfolk line. CB6 takes in Haddenham, Sutton, Wilburton, Coveney and the Wentworth side. CB8 is Newmarket and the villages round it, Exning, Kentford, Cheveley and Ashley. Is technically Suffolk but is a fifteen-minute run from the Ely bypass and we treat it the same.
If your postcode starts with any of those three, we are almost certainly out your way already that week. Ely station makes a difference to how we plan a morning. It is a proper junction — Cambridge, King's Lynn, Peterborough and the Norwich line all meet there — and the level crossing by the station will hold you for a good while if a freight comes through. So when a job sits on the far side of it we set off earlier rather than turn up at half nine with an excuse.
The Fen roads are the other factor: fast, straight. Completely blocked if a tractor with a beet trailer is ahead of you between Sutton and Witchford.
Neighbouring towns we reach on the same run as Ely
Ely rarely sits on its own in a week. Cambridge is the big one to the south, fifteen miles down the A10, and enough of our diary is down there that house clearance in Cambridge has a page of its own. West across the fen it's Huntingdon and the villages either side of the A14 — if that's where the property is, start with house clearance in Huntingdon instead. And small places count as much as big ones round here: Chippenham is a village in our own CB7, out on the Newmarket side past Fordham, and house clearance in Chippenham is written up separately. If you're not sure which of them your property belongs to, give us the postcode and we'll tell you.
The houses themselves
The stock round here is mixed in a way that suburbs aren't. Fen cottages with rooms you can't get a three-seater out of without taking the door off. Sixties and seventies bungalows on the estates off Lynn Road and out at Little Downham. Barn conversions with a mezzanine and a spiral stair. Newer boxes on the Ely fringes with a garage that hasn't held a car since the day it was built. Each one changes the plan. A cottage with a narrow dogleg stair takes longer per room than a four-bed new build. We would rather say that on the phone than discover it at eleven o'clock with a sofa wedged. Damp is the other Fen speciality. Outbuildings, sheds and garages down here take water from below as much as above. What looks like a shed full of tools is often a shed full of rust and rotten chipboard. We still take it. It just goes to a different pile.
The kinds of house clearance in Ely people ask us for
Most weeks are a mix of the five below, and they run differently from one another. Different paperwork, different access, different things we're not allowed to put in a mixed load.
Probate house clearance in Ely
Probate work is the bulk of it. An executor is usually working to a solicitor's timetable and a sale date. The house has to be empty and presentable in between. We go room by room, set aside paperwork, photographs, jewellery and anything that looks like it belongs to the estate rather than to the tip. Box it for whoever is dealing with the will. Where the property is being sold, the empty rooms get photographed the same day. For a probate house clearance the invoice can go to the solicitor or to the executor directly rather than to a family member who is only helping out. Say so when you book and we'll set it up that way. More detail on our probate house clearance page.
Flat clearance in Ely, CB7
Flat clearance is its own animal. Flats over the shops in the middle of Ely have a communal street door, a stair with a turn in it and nowhere obvious to stand a van; the newer blocks out towards the river and the station have bays that belong to residents. We need to know in advance where we're allowed to put three tonnes of vehicle. Neither is a problem if we know before the day. Neither is much fun at ten past nine if we don't. Tell us the floor, tell us whether there's a lift. Tell us whether the door onto the street sticks.
End of tenancy clearance in Ely
Landlords and managing agents around CB6 and CB7 call us for end of tenancy work, usually with a date they can't move because the next tenant is already booked in. That job is about leaving the place ready to let, not just empty: beds and mattresses out, kitchen cupboards cleared, the shed and the bin store done as well. Anything the previous tenant abandoned dealt with properly rather than left stacked by the gate. If the property has to be handed back to a landlord who lives elsewhere, we'll send photographs of every room.
Hoarder house clearance around Ely
Hoarder house clearance is slower, and it is a two-day job more often than not. There's more on how those days run further down this page, but the short version is that the crew works to whatever pace the household needs, nothing is commented on. Paperwork and valuables get pulled out of the pile rather than shovelled into it. Where a property needs treating as well as emptying, we can pick that up too — see hoarder house clearance.
Garage and loft clearance in Ely
Plenty of calls here aren't a whole house at all. A garage and loft clearance on one of the Ely estates is a standard half-day: boarded loft, a ladder that hasn't been used since the last owner. A garage of damp chipboard and rusted tools. We bring the loft down ourselves rather than leaving you to hand boxes through a hatch. Single items and part loads are fine as well — a suite, a piano, a shed's worth of scrap — and general house rubbish removal if there's no furniture in it at all.
What happens to it
Usable furniture, tools, crockery, bikes and anything else with wear left in it gets offered on before it gets thrown. East Cambridgeshire has a decent network of second-hand outlets and church-run shops, and it is a better outcome for everyone than another skip going to landfill. Metal is separated on the van. What genuinely has nowhere else to go is weighed in at a permitted facility and comes back to us as a transfer note. We keep and which you can ask for at any point.
We are registered with the Environment Agency as an upper-tier waste carrier, CBDU419679. We carry public liability cover for working inside somebody else's property. What we cannot put in a mixed load is the chemical end of things. Half-used tins of thinners, patio gas cylinders, car batteries, asbestos sheeting off an old coal bunker. Those need a booked, specialist route, and the Witchford recycling centre takes several of them from householders directly. Tell us in advance if there's a shelf of it in the garage and we'll sort out where it goes rather than leave it standing on the drive.
Asking us to look at a clearance in Ely
Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 with the postcode and a rough description of the rooms, or send photographs through the form on this page. A few pictures of a full loft or a packed garage tell us more than a paragraph ever does. The quote is free and there is nothing to sign for asking for one. Where it's obvious that a second load is coming, we say so before the first van leaves rather than halfway through the afternoon. Stairs, distance from the door to the van, an upholstered suite that falls under the POP rules, a fridge, a piano, a boarded loft. All of that gets settled at the start, and if we aren't sure about something we'll say we aren't sure.
Overfilled houses
Some of these properties have forty years of belongings in them and every surface used. It doesn't faze the crew, and nobody comments on it in front of you. We go room by room, we keep an eye out for paperwork, jewellery and cash tucked into books and coat pockets. Anything of that sort goes into a box for whoever is dealing with the estate. Two-day jobs are normal for those. Say honestly how full it is when you call. An under-estimate helps nobody, least of all you, because it means the van arrives too small for the day. Executors, probate solicitors acting for a family, landlords between tenancies and people simply downsizing into a flat by the river. We work for all of them across CB6, CB7 and CB8. Call the office with the postcode and how many rooms are involved and we'll tell you what a clearance in Ely looks like and what day we can get to you.
Questions we get asked about house clearance in Ely
Do you clear probate properties, and who is invoiced?
Yes, and it's a large part of what we do around Ely. The invoice can be made out to the solicitor handling the estate, or to the executor or administrator directly, rather than to whichever relative happened to meet us at the door. Payment can come out of the estate rather than a relative's own pocket, there is no deposit. The invoice follows the work rather than the booking. Tell us at the booking stage who it should go to and what reference the solicitor wants on it. We'll set it up that way from the start.
How much notice do you need for a clearance in Ely?
Usually a few days, sometimes less if a van is already out this side of the fen. Two-day jobs and anything needing a second load want more warning. So does a completion date you can't move. If you're working to a sale or a tenancy handover, tell us the deadline when you first ring rather than at the end of the conversation.
Do we have to be there on the day?
No. Plenty of our house clearance work in Ely is done with the keys left with a neighbour, an agent or a key safe, exactly as the bungalow at the top of this page was. What we do need is written confirmation of what goes and what stays before the day. Someone we can reach by phone if something unexpected turns up in a wardrobe.
What can't go in the van with everything else?
Upholstered furniture — sofas, armchairs, padded dining chairs — has to be kept out of a mixed load and sent down its own permitted route because of the persistent organic pollutants rules. Fridges and freezers go separately so the gas can be drawn off properly. Paint, thinners, gas cylinders, car batteries and anything with asbestos in it need a booked specialist route. We'll tell you which before we come.
Will I get proof the waste was disposed of properly?
Yes. Everything that has to be tipped goes to a permitted facility and comes back as a waste transfer note. You can ask for a copy at any point, including months later when a solicitor wants it for the estate file. Our upper-tier waste carrier registration is CBDU419679 and you're welcome to check it against the Environment Agency's public register.
Do you take a single item, or is it whole houses only?
Single items are fine. A piano out of a Fen cottage, one suite, a fridge freezer, the contents of one shed. None of that needs to be part of a full house clearance. Ely, Soham, Littleport, Haddenham, Witchford, Stretham and Little Downham are all short runs for us. A small job doesn't need to wait for a big one nearby.
