The keys are usually next door. That is how a good share of our house clearance work in Cirencester, in the middle of the Cotswolds, gets arranged. The person holding the paperwork lives in another county, sometimes another country, and the house itself sits empty off a lane outside town with a For Sale board going soft in the rain.
We do not need you there. A neighbour, an agent, a key safe, a solicitor's office — any of those will do, and we'll send photographs of every room once it's clear so you can see the state we left it in. Keys at eight from the house next door, team on the doorstep at nine, keys back through her letter box at the end of the day if she's out. That's an ordinary Cirencester day for us, and we've been doing it across Gloucestershire since 2007.
Probate house clearance in Cirencester
A fair amount of it is probate house clearance, which is a phrase nobody uses until they suddenly need it. An executor two hundred miles off, a grant of probate that has just come through, a house that has to be empty before the agent can do anything with it. The instructions often arrive through a solicitor's office and the executor never stands in the property at all. If there's something to be looked out for — photographs, letters, documents, a ring that was meant to be in the dressing table — you say so and the team look for it rather than bag it.
Who pays is the question executors ask first, and it is fair to answer it plainly rather than make anyone ring up to find out. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, whichever way the estate is being administered, and payment can come from the estate rather than out of anybody's own pocket. There is no deposit — nothing is asked for before the work is done. The quote itself is free and it commits you to nothing. If the paperwork needs a particular reference or has to be addressed to the firm handling the probate, tell us at the booking and that is how it goes out, with the waste transfer note alongside it for the file.
The town, and the roads we come in on
Cirencester sits in the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, GL7, with Fairford and Lechlade sharing the same postcode district out towards the Thames, Tetbury just down the road in GL8. Moreton-in-Marsh in GL56 an hour up the Fosse Way, Chipping Campden in GL55 a turn off it. There is no station in Cirencester itself. Kemble, four miles south-west, is the one everybody uses, and it puts you on the Swindon to Gloucester line. Our vans come in off the A419 from Swindon or down the A417 from Gloucester, depending on which end of the day the job sits.
The housing here is not one thing. There are the stone terraces and cottages in the old streets around the Market Place, some of them three storeys with stairs a wardrobe will not go round. There are the post-war and sixties estates at Chesterton, Stratton and Watermoor, mostly straightforward for a Luton van parked on the road. And there are the bungalows and detached places out towards Baunton, Preston and South Cerney where a lifetime of things ends up in a double garage rather than an attic. Each one changes how long a house clearance in Cirencester actually takes, which is why we ask about the garage and the loft before quoting anything.
Outside the town the same GL7 runs a long way, and we work all of it. Fairford and Lechlade east towards the Thames; Kemble, Ewen and Somerford Keynes to the south-west; South Cerney, Cerney Wick and Down Ampney down among the lakes; then the string along the Coln and the Ampneys. Bibury, Barnsley, Coln St Aldwyns, Quenington, Meysey Hampton, Poulton, Ampney Crucis. North of town it's Baunton, North Cerney, Bagendon and Daglingworth up the Churn valley, and west it's Sapperton, Coates and Rodmarton on the lip of the Golden Valley. A village house clearance is a different day to one in Cirencester itself: no kerb to stand a van against, a farm gate that won't take a Luton, and quite often a stone outbuilding that turns out to be half the job.
Past the edge of GL7 the county carries on and so do we, but the work there belongs to its own page rather than this one. Over the top of the Golden Valley there's house clearance in Stroud; up the A435 the bigger end of things, house clearance in Cheltenham; and down under the escarpment the smaller, quieter house clearance in Dursley. If the house you're ringing about is in one of those, say so and we'll book it as that town's job. What's described on this page is Cirencester and GL7, and we don't dress a job up as being somewhere it wasn't.
A three-bed house clearance, and how little we needed to be told
December 2022. Three bedrooms, a loft and a shed, and a customer who answered every question on our booking list in order, most of it in capitals, which made setting the whole thing up take about four minutes.
Nothing hazardous, nothing verminous. No decaying food, no needles, none of the things that turn a house clearance into a different kind of job with different kit and a longer day. No stair lift to dismantle, no piano stranded in a ground-floor room. Carpets staying. Curtains staying. Cleaning not wanted. The shed and its contents were in scope, and that's worth saying out loud, because the shed is where a booking most often comes unstuck. Twenty years of paint tins, a mower that hasn't run since the last owner, half a greenhouse leaning on the fence.
An upright fridge freezer to come out, and a mattress. Neither of those can just ride in the middle of a mixed load. The fridge freezer has to go to a site set up to take the gas out of it before anything else happens, and mattresses are kept apart because the transfer station handles them on their own. Not difficult, but it changes how the van is packed, so we like to know at the booking rather than find it in the kitchen at half nine.
The one line from that job we still repeat to each other came under "any items to be left?", and the answer was: "ONLY THE HENRY HOOVER". Not the good china, not the wardrobe, not the pictures. The hoover. It was wanted for the sweep-through after everyone had gone, and in a three-bedroom house full of forty years of things it was the single item that wasn't ours to take. We wrote it on the sheet, the team leader wrote it on his hand, and the hoover stood in the middle of an empty hall at the end of the day looking faintly pleased with itself.
The customer met the team at the property and stayed to point things out, which speeds a clearance up more than people expect — not because we need supervising, but because "that goes, that stays, don't worry about the loft, it's empty" saves a dozen trips down the stairs to ask. Two loads went out that day. Loft, shed and all three bedrooms, done between nine and the back end of the afternoon.
What it costs, and why we won't guess over the phone
We won't invent a number before we know what's in the house. Two bedrooms can mean four bags or it can mean a garage stacked to the door, and a loft nobody has opened in twenty years can add a day on its own.
So there are two ways to get a figure out of us, and both of them are quick. Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and talk it through with someone who books these every day. Or send photographs — room by room, plus the loft hatch, the garage, the shed and the garden — using the form on this page. Tell us the size of the property, what's in scope outside, and roughly what state it's all in, and you'll get a figure that holds. It's free and it commits you to nothing.
Where the load actually goes
Whatever is still fit to use gets set aside on the day and offered on locally — a furniture project, a charity shop that takes house furniture, or a reuse scheme. Books, tools, crockery and decent furniture very often go that way rather than into the van. The rest is weighed in at a permitted transfer station and separated there, with a transfer note issued for every load, so there's paper behind where your things went. We hold waste carrier registration CBDU419679 and we are insured for the work; if you want the number checked against the Environment Agency register before you book, do it, it's public.
Cotswold District Council empties the bins in this part of Gloucestershire, and the county runs the recycling centre for the small stuff. Neither is set up to deal with a whole house. That is the gap we fill.
The things we have to leave
Tins of paint, thinners, gas cylinders, car batteries, anything that would be a fire or a chemical problem in the back of a van. Those cannot travel in a mixed load, and we will point them out rather than quietly take them and hope. If a house is full of them, say so early and we'll arrange it properly.
Sofas, armchairs and padded dining chairs are their own category now. The flame-retardant foam in older upholstery falls under the persistent organic pollutant rules, so those pieces are counted individually, kept apart from the rest of the load and sent for incineration at a site licensed to do it. There's no way round it and no quicker route — that's been the position since 2023 — and we'd far rather you heard it at the booking than on the doorstep.
Asbestos we don't touch. Garage roofs and old flue pipes out this way sometimes have it, and that needs a licensed contractor, not us.
Rooms that have filled up over the years
Some of the Cirencester properties we're called out to hold thirty years of things and barely a path from the front door to the kitchen. Nobody on the team comments and nobody stands around looking at it. A hoarder house clearance simply needs more days and more loads, and we'll tell you honestly at the quote stage that it's three days rather than one instead of turning up, doing a room and springing it on you halfway through.
We also stop for what matters. Photographs, letters, jewellery, documents — if you tell us to look out for something, the team look, and it's set aside rather than bagged. On estate clearances that's often the only reason anyone wanted to be there at all.
Garage and loft clearance in Cirencester
When a day runs over, nine times out of ten it is the two spaces nobody looked in before ringing us. A garage and loft clearance in Cirencester is its own piece of work and we cost it as one, whether it comes with the house or on its own. Plenty of people here keep the house and only want the roof space and the garage emptied before a sale or a move into something smaller.
Lofts vary more than you'd think. The stone cottages in the middle of town often have a hatch on a half-landing with nowhere safe to stand a ladder, and everything has to come down by hand, one item at a time, which is slow and can't be hurried. The sixties houses at Chesterton and Watermoor tend to have a boarded loft over the landing and a proper hatch, and those empty quickly. Out in the bungalows towards Preston and South Cerney the loft is usually shallow but runs the whole footprint, so there's more in it than the hatch suggests.
Garages out this way are rarely garages. They're a workshop, a store for the garden, and the place where the last three sofas went when new ones arrived. And those sofas are the POP items we have to separate and send for incineration, so it helps to say on the phone whether there's upholstery in there. Add the usual: paint, decking offcuts, bike frames, a chest freezer that hasn't been plugged in since somebody's move, tiles left over from a bathroom, and a workbench that was built inside the garage and will have to come apart to get out of it. Detached stone outbuildings in the villages are the same again, only colder and usually with a floor that won't take a sack barrow.
Tell us about the garage and loft at the booking, and the day is planned around them. Find them at nine and the day is planned around them anyway, just badly.
Setting a date
Ring us or send the details through the form and we'll come back with a date and a figure. What we need from you: the full address, the size of the property, whether the loft, garage, shed and garden are included, anything hazardous or particularly unpleasant, anything to be kept, and whether a Luton van can stand outside without a warden appearing. Most Cirencester clearances are booked a few days ahead, and the team starts at nine.
If you're arranging a house clearance in Cirencester, Fairford, Lechlade, Tetbury, South Cerney, Northleach or anywhere else across GL7 and the Cotswold district, that's the whole of it. One team, one day where the house allows it, and the keys back where you asked us to leave them.
Common questions about house clearance in Cirencester
Do I have to be at the property?
No. Most Cirencester jobs are arranged with keys from a neighbour, an agent, a key safe or a solicitor's office, and photographs of every room go over once the house is clear. If you'd rather be there and point things out, that's welcome too — it usually shortens the day.
Can you do a probate house clearance and invoice the solicitor?
Yes. Probate work is a large part of what we do here, and we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, whichever fits how the estate is being run. Payment can come from the estate, there is no deposit, and the waste transfer note goes over with the paperwork if the file needs it.
Do you clear the garage and loft as well as the house?
Yes, and we'd sooner know about them at the booking than meet them on the day. We'll also take a garage and loft on their own, without the house, which is a common request before a sale or a downsize.
How long does a clearance take?
A straightforward three-bed with a loft and a shed is a day, usually nine until the back end of the afternoon, with two loads out. A house that's filled up over thirty years is two or three days, and we say so at the quote stage rather than halfway through.
What happens to everything you take away?
Anything still fit to use is set aside on the day and offered on locally — a furniture project, a charity shop that takes house furniture, a reuse scheme. The rest goes to a permitted transfer station and is separated there, with a transfer note for every load. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679 and it's public, so check it if you want to.
Is there anything you won't take?
Paint, thinners, gas cylinders and car batteries can't travel in a mixed load, and asbestos we don't touch at all — that needs a licensed contractor. Upholstered furniture we take, but it has to be kept separate and sent for incineration under the persistent organic pollutant rules. Tell us early and none of it holds the day up.
