Three van loads came out of that house at St Dogmaels, just over the bridge from Cardigan, on the old Dyfed coast, on a wet Friday at the end of November. It was booked as one and had turned into three before lunch, because the outbuildings held more than anyone had allowed for. A mattress came out, and a fridge freezer, both of which have to be handled on their own rather than tipped in with everything else. The person instructing was doing so from Wiltshire, a good four hours away, and had not seen the inside of the place for some time. As house clearance in Cardigan goes, that is an ordinary enough day.
That job sits in the SA43 district, which is Cardigan's own. The Teifi is the county line there — the town is Ceredigion, St Dogmaels is Pembrokeshire, and you cross between the two in about ninety seconds. For a van it makes no odds. For paperwork it sometimes does, and it is worth saying which side of the water a property is on when you first ring.
What actually leaves the house, and where it ends up
Nothing goes straight to a hole in the ground if we can help it. Furniture that someone would still use, crockery, tools, books, garden pots. That gets set aside on the day and offered on to a charity shop or a reuse scheme within reach of the town, and around here that usually means somewhere in Cardigan or up the coast. What is left after that is weighed in at a permitted transfer station and split there for recycling, with a transfer note issued for every load we tip. We hold waste carrier licence CBDU419679 and we are fully insured; ask to see either and you will get it by email the same day.
Two categories get pulled out and dealt with separately. Fridges, freezers and chest freezers carry gas in the circuit and cannot ride in a mixed load — the St Dogmaels fridge freezer went off on its own, and that is the rule rather than the exception. Sofas, armchairs and other upholstered seating are the other one. Since the flame-retardant chemicals in the padding were reclassified, upholstered seating has to be kept apart from general waste and destroyed at a plant licensed for it. A three-piece suite travels separately from the rest of a house clearance load and is treated separately at the other end.
Getting a Luton van into a Cardigan street
Half the work here is where you park. The lanes off Pwllhai and the streets running up from the quay are narrow, the pavements are narrower still, and there is not always a driveway. If you are on a restricted street in Cardigan, ring the county council a week ahead and ask about a dispensation for a Luton. Customers have arranged one for the whole of the clearance day before now, which lets the team sit on the double yellows outside the door so long as an ambulance could still get past. It saves half a day of carrying boxes to a van parked round the corner. Ceredigion works the same way as any other county council on this — ask early, not the night before.
Out in the villages the problem reverses, and it is usually the approach rather than the parking. There is generally a yard or a bit of verge to load off at Cilgerran, Llechryd, Penparc or Ferwig, but the last mile to it can be single track with passing places, and a Luton meets a tractor sooner or later. Down at Gwbert and out towards Mwnt the lanes drop steeply to the water. St Dogmaels is terraces on a hill. None of it stops us — it just means we would rather know before the day than find out on it, so tell us on the phone if the last stretch is tight, and tell us if there is a gate we will not get through.
We take photographs on every clearance and attach them to the paperwork. When you have instructed from another county, or another country, that set of pictures is the only way you will ever see the empty rooms.
Farmhouses, cottages and the two-day job
Up the Teifi valley, and inland from Cardigan generally, a good share of the housing is stone: cottages with thick walls and small doorways, farmhouses with a range of outbuildings behind them that nobody has properly looked in since the fifties. Those are the ones that run to two days. The house itself is often modest — two bedrooms, a front room, a kitchen — and then there is a barn with forty years of tools, feed sacks, tyres and furniture that was moved out of the house rather than got rid of. If there are outbuildings, say so when you book and let us see photographs of them as well as of the rooms. It is the barn that decides whether a house clearance is one day or two, not the bedrooms.
One request comes up on nearly every probate job, and we do it as standard. Letters, photographs, cine film, family papers, medals, jewellery, a bit of cash tucked in a coat pocket — the team sets that aside in a box and it stays with whoever is instructing, or gets posted on if nobody can be there. Say what matters before the day rather than after. Once a load is tipped it is gone.
Lofts, sheds, garages and the things people forget
Nine times in ten the extra volume is not in the house. It is above it or beside it. Loft hatches, a shed on the drive, a garage with a door that has not opened since the handle went — people genuinely forget those when they are describing the property over the phone, and then remember a fortnight after booking. Fine. We simply carry it. A garage and loft clearance in Cardigan is often booked on its own, without the rooms at all, and that is a perfectly normal job for us. Hatch down, boards up, everything out through the front door and the garage emptied off the drive in the same visit.
The other half of that conversation is what stays. A common instruction is fitted bedroom furniture, built-in appliances, curtains, blinds and light fittings all left where they are, with a couple of big pieces out of the lounge — the sort of wardrobe or cabinet that takes four hands and a door off its hinges. That is a normal instruction and not an awkward one. Tell us what is staying and the team will work around it; sticker the pieces if you like, plenty of people do.
Stairlifts we can take out. Pianos too, though on a first floor it becomes a conversation about the staircase.
The day itself is simple enough. The team meets you at the property at nine, or at ten if we are coming from further off, and the aim is to have the place cleared by the end of that day. Bigger houses and anywhere with outbuildings can run to a second visit, and we will say so before you book rather than halfway through the afternoon. Open the windows, point at what stays, and the rest is ours.
Cardigan, Ceredigion and the ground we cover
Cardigan — Aberteifi — is the western end of what we cover in this county. SA43 is the district we work most: the town itself, St Dogmaels and Moylegrove across the river, Cilgerran and Llechryd upstream, Penparc, Ferwig, Gwbert and Mwnt on the coast road north, and Aberporth, Tresaith and Blaenporth beyond them. From the town we run north up the A487 to Synod Inn and Aberaeron, with the coast road down to Llangrannog and New Quay off it, then Llanarth, and on to Llanrhystud, Llanon, Aberystwyth and Borth at the top. Inland it is Llechryd, Newcastle Emlyn, Llandysul and Lampeter in the SA postcodes, with Tregaron and Ystrad Meurig further north where the SY districts begin. Bow Street and Talybont sit just north of Aberystwyth and we get there regularly.
Three of those neighbours have pages of their own, and if the property you are ringing about is nearer to them than to the Teifi you may want to start there instead. At the top of the county there is house clearance in Aberystwyth, the university town and much the busiest end of Ceredigion for us. South east over the county line, house clearance in Carmarthen covers the market town and the ground around it, and south west of the estuary house clearance in Haverfordwest takes in the Pembrokeshire side. Same vans, same licence, same way of working.
There has been no railway into Cardigan since the line shut in the sixties, which is why so much of this county is a van job rather than a train job. The nearest platforms are Fishguard and Goodwick to the south west and Carmarthen to the south east; at the northern end of the county there are stations at Aberystwyth, Borth and the reopened halt at Bow Street. Ceredigion County Council runs the household recycling sites, and those are for residents' own car loads — a contractor's van cannot use them, which is exactly why a licensed carrier and a transfer station come into it.
What it costs and how we work it out
Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 with the postcode and the number of bedrooms, or send photographs through the form on this page, and you will get a figure back. That is the whole of it. We do not put numbers on a web page, because the only honest figure is the one for your house, with your outbuildings and your access in it.
Most bookings are done that way, over the phone and then by email. One clearance we handled last winter was settled entirely like that. A call first, then the customer sent our list of questions back with every answer typed into the body of the email in red so that nothing could be missed, and the day was fixed for a Friday at the end of February, 2023. Team at the property for nine. By then the person instructing had moved overseas and had given us a new address for the paperwork, so they were not there on the day and never saw the rooms in either state. The walk-round photographs the team leader takes at the start, and again when the place is empty, were the only view of it they got. What they wrote when they confirmed was this:
> "Thanks for your time on the phone. I would like to go ahead with your proposal. Please see answers to your questions below (in red). Clearance day as discussed 24th Feb 2023."
Answers in red. You would be surprised how much easier that makes a booking at our end. Nothing had to be boxed or bagged before the team arrived, either — cupboards, wardrobes and drawers were cleared as they stood, the carpets and underlay came up, and the house was swept through before the door was locked.
Full houses do not put us off either. Rooms you cannot walk into, thirty years of newspapers, an attic packed to the rafters. A hoarder house clearance is not unusual for us in west Wales and we turn up with the right size van and the right number of hands rather than making anyone feel awkward about it. Probate house clearance in Cardigan is routine work as well, and a fair share of what we do in SA43 is exactly that: an empty house, a family two counties away or further, and a solicitor holding the file. Where probate is being dealt with by a firm rather than by a relative, we can invoice the solicitor, the attorney or the executors of the estate direct, and address the transfer notes and the photographs the same way. Say so when you ring and we will set the paperwork up that way from the start.
If you have a property in Cardigan, St Dogmaels, Aberporth or anywhere out towards Aberaeron and Lampeter, ring the office with the postcode and the number of bedrooms and we will tell you what it takes. Usually a day. Usually next week.
Common questions about house clearance in Cardigan
How long does a house clearance in Cardigan take?
Most are a single day. The team meets you at the property at nine, or ten if they are travelling in, and the aim is an empty house by the end of the afternoon. A farmhouse with barns, or a house where the garage and loft are both full, can run into a second day — we will tell you that when you book, not on the day.
Do you cover St Dogmaels, Cilgerran and the villages outside the town?
Yes. SA43 crosses the river, so St Dogmaels and Moylegrove are as much ours as Pwllhai is, and so are Cilgerran, Llechryd, Penparc, Ferwig, Gwbert, Mwnt and the coast up through Aberporth. Newcastle Emlyn, Llandysul, Aberaeron and Lampeter sit on the same runs.
Can you do a probate house clearance in Cardigan if I live a long way off?
That is a large part of the work. We can take a key from a neighbour, a solicitor or an agent, clear the property with nobody present, and email the before-and-after photographs the same day or the next morning. Anything of sentimental value is set aside and kept for you. On a probate clearance the invoice and the paperwork can be addressed to whoever is administering the estate.
What if the house is hoarded or has not been cleared for years?
Ring us and describe it honestly, or send photographs — that is all we need. A hoarder house clearance is a matter of the right van size, the right number of people and enough time, and nobody on the team will make a fuss about the state of a house.
How much does a house clearance in Cardigan cost?
Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 with the postcode and the number of bedrooms, or send photographs through the form on this page, and you will get a figure for your property. We will not quote a number on a page for a house we have not seen.
