The shed was the part nobody had mentioned.
That was a June job, a probate clearance at the far end of our Tavistock patch, PL19, where the lanes stop pretending to be roads and start climbing towards the moor. A three-bedroom house, instructions coming from a local solicitor's office over in Plymouth rather than from anyone in the family, and a note on the booking that the garden had "a bit of storage" in it. The bit of storage turned out to be a full timber shed, packed to the door, the sort where you open it and something falls out at your feet. So the house and the shed together took the team two days. One load away on the first day, another on the second, four mattresses out of the bedrooms, and a three-bedroom clean once the rooms were empty and the carpets were the only thing left.
That job is a fair picture of what house clearance in Tavistock, on the western edge of Dartmoor, looks like. Rarely a straight in-and-out. Nearly always a shed, a garage, a lean-to, a stone outbuilding somebody's grandfather built and nobody has opened since.
The ground we cover from Tavistock
Tavistock sits in PL19, in West Devon, with the moor on one side and the Tamar on the other. We work the whole of that district and the ground either side of it. Yelverton, Horrabridge and Princetown up on the moor, Lifton and the villages along the A30 corridor, Ivybridge and the parishes towards the South Hams, and over the county line for Okehampton, North Tawton and Beaworthy. Mary Tavy, Peter Tavy, Chillaton, Milton Abbot, Lamerton, Brentor, Gulworthy, Whitchurch — all of that is an ordinary morning for us.
Three of those neighbours have pages of their own, and if the house you are dealing with sits closer to them than to us, start there instead. house clearance in Plymouth for the city and the suburbs down the A386, house clearance in Okehampton for the north side of the moor and the villages under it, and house clearance in Launceston once you are over the Tamar. Same team, same vans, same waste carrier licence — it only changes which morning we come.
Worth saying plainly: Tavistock has had no railway station since 1968, and that shapes how families deal with a house here. The nearest platforms are Gunnislake, six miles down the A390 on the Tamar Valley line, and Bere Alston further along the same branch. Okehampton reopened in 2021 with services through to Exeter, and most people who come down from up-country still land at Plymouth and drive the A386 over Roborough Down. If you're an executor living three counties away, that's a long day just to open a front door and look at a wardrobe. Several of the probate clearances we do around here are booked by somebody who has been to the property twice in a year and would rather not make a third trip. Probate house clearance in Tavistock is, more often than not, arranged entirely at a distance.
Keys through the post, meters read while we're there
We can work from keys. It happens often enough that the office has a routine for it — keys sent by Special Delivery, tracked, signed for, held until the morning of the job, then posted back afterwards with the tracking receipt kept either end. If you want the electric and the gas read before we lock up, say so when you book and the team will write the numbers down and send them over with the photographs of the emptied rooms. Costs nothing, saves an executor most of a day.
Not everything gets arranged on the phone, either. One clearance we did on a Wednesday in July 2022 was set up almost entirely by email, and the customer had the booking questions answered before we had to ask twice. The full address, whether anyone at the property was self-isolating or showing symptoms. That was still a live question then — the date he wanted, the size of the place, a contact number for the day, and who would be there to let the team in and say what went. Four bedrooms and a garden. His father, as it turned out, who stood in the hall and pointed.
The parking he sorted himself, before we asked. He wrote: "Not a residents parking only street, it is pay and display. Will try to put cones out tonight." Cones put out the night before are worth more to a clearance team than any amount of apologising on the morning, and a customer who knows the difference between residents' parking and pay and display has already saved his own day.
The other thing about that job was how little of it went to a tip. Three separate drop-offs were asked for and three were made: a sofa, trunks and some loose items to one address, the remaining items to a second, and one large item. A bar, of all things — to a third, which took some getting through a doorway. Two loads went out over the day, a mattress among them, and the paperwork went through a solicitor's office rather than to the family. Plenty of houses are like that. The stuff isn't rubbish, it just needs to end up in three different places, and somebody has to drive it.
What actually leaves the property
Furniture, beds, wardrobes, white goods, carpets if you want them up, loft contents, garage contents, garden furniture, tools, the shed. Boxes don't need packing beforehand — the team empties cupboards, drawers and wardrobes as they go, and that's included rather than extra.
Garage and loft clearance in Tavistock is nearly always part of the same visit rather than a second one, and it's the part people underestimate. A loft hatch on a landing with no ladder fitted, a garage with the up-and-over jammed since about 2011, a lean-to full of paint tins. Tell us they're there and the day is planned around them.
Anything still usable gets offered on before it gets thrown out. Furniture in decent order, unopened household goods, books, tools — and Devon has more of those than most counties. The remainder is weighed in at a permitted transfer site and comes back to us as a ticket, so there's a paper trail from your doorstep to the point of disposal. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679, held with the Environment Agency, and it's a fair question to ask any firm quoting you. Fly-tipped furniture traced back to a house can land the householder with the fine, not the man who took it.
Two things we handle separately. Sofas, armchairs and other upholstered seating can't simply be tipped with general waste any more: the fire-retardant chemicals in upholstery foam are treated as persistent organic pollutants, so soft furniture is kept apart and sent for incineration through its own route. That's why mattresses and suites get loaded last and go their own way — the four out of the bedrooms on that June job did, and so did the one out of the four-bed. And chemicals we simply can't put in a van with everything else: Calor bottles off a garage roof. Tell us before the day and we'll say what can go and what needs a specialist collection.
How a clearance is costed
Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and talk it through, or send photographs through the form on this page. Every room, the loft hatch, the garage, the shed and the garden — and you'll have a figure back for the job. That's the whole of it. We don't guess over a hedge, and we don't hand you a figure that moves once the van is half full.
We're honest about the limits of a photograph. Not everything shows up in one, so the team leader walks the property before anything is touched and tells you there and then if what he's looking at is bigger than what he was sent, and nothing gets loaded without your say-so. Better a two-minute conversation on the doorstep than a surprise at four o'clock.
And if you're an executor and probate hasn't come through yet, ring anyway. A good deal of Tavistock house clearance work is booked months before it happens, held loosely, and firmed up when the paperwork clears. We can deal with the solicitor's office direct on the probate side rather than pushing it back on the family, which is usually what people want when they're two hundred miles away.
Access, parking and the odd Tavistock problem
The town centre is tight. The streets climbing away from Bedford Square are narrow, some are one-way, and the Duke of Bedford's green Hurdwick-stone cottages have no off-street parking at all, only a shared back lane. On the estates out at Whitchurch and Callington Road it's easier — usually a drive, sometimes a garage. The moorland cottages towards Mary Tavy and Peter Tavy come with a different problem: a long unmade track and a gate the van won't fit through, which means barrowing to the road.
Tell us the awkward bit when you book and it stops being a problem. One customer set out the route in advance — no way into the garden from outside, so everything had to come through the internal garage, then the kitchen and utility, deliberately keeping the boot traffic off carpets that had just been cleaned. That's exactly the kind of thing worth mentioning, along with whether there's power and water on, whether anything needs disconnecting, and where a Luton-sized van can legally stand.
Full house or one room, we'll take it as it comes. Hoarder house clearance — properties that have got badly overfilled over years, floor to ceiling in places. Is ordinary work for us in Tavistock and not a story we tell afterwards, and the team turns up with masks, gloves and enough bags for whatever's behind the door. If loose money, jewellery or documents turn up in a drawer — and they do — it's put to one side for you rather than binned.
What we need to price it
the size of the place, and what outbuildings there are as well as rooms. Photographs help most. You'll get a proper figure for the day, in writing, before anything is booked — not a man on the step revising it upwards once the van is loaded. Most Tavistock clearances are done inside a single day; the ones with a shed like that June job take two, and we'd rather say so at the start than surprise you at four o'clock.
So: 0800 046 5555, or the form on this page. Tell us the town, the type of house, and the bit you're dreading — that's usually the loft, the garage or the shed — and we'll tell you what a house clearance in Tavistock will take. We've been doing this since 2007, and there isn't much behind a door in PL19 we haven't carried out of one.
Common questions about house clearance in Tavistock
Can you invoice a solicitor or an executor? Yes. On a probate house clearance we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly rather than sending anything to a family member personally, and the payment can come out of the estate. There is no deposit and nothing is asked for up front — the invoice follows the work once the property is empty.
Do I have to be at the property on the day? No. Plenty of our Tavistock house clearance work is arranged by someone who never sets foot in the house. Keys come by post or from an agent, and photographs of the empty rooms go over the same day.
Do you clear the garage, the loft and the outbuildings too? Yes, and they want mentioning when you ring. Out here a stone outbuilding or a lean-to is often the fullest part of a house clearance, and it changes the number of loads.
How soon can you come? Usually within a few days of agreeing a figure. Say if there is a completion date or an end of tenancy checkout to work to and we will book to it.
What happens to everything you take? Anything reusable goes to a charity or reuse project. The rest is weighed in at a licensed transfer station under our carrier registration, and the waste transfer note is yours if you want it for the file.
Will you take a hoarded or verminous house clearance? Yes, without comment. Tell us the state of it when you ring so the right kit and the right number of days are arranged in advance.
