The ivy was the only thing we left standing. That was a whole-house clearance in Belvedere in March 2025. Three bedrooms, loft, garage and a shed at the bottom of the garden, the lot booked and paid for by a relative who lived a few hundred miles away in the north-west and couldn't get down until the week after. Two of our men did it. They let themselves in with the code for the key safe, worked the house from the top down. By the end of it the loft hatch was clear, the garage door opened properly for the first time in years and the shed was down to bare boards.
The ivy had grown up the back wall and wrapped itself round the guttering and the downpipe. The customer had asked for it off. Our two took one look, decided the ivy was probably the only thing holding that guttering to the fascia, and left it. Better an awkward phone call than a length of cast iron in the flowerbed and a bill for a roofer. So we rang and explained, and that was fine.
The other thing they did on that job was stop and think about what they were carrying out. In the front room, on the mantelpiece, they found service medals. Those got put back where they were, along with a few other bits that looked like they mattered. Every coin that turned up in a drawer or down the back of something was left in the room it came from rather than swept into a bag. Then the team filmed a walk-through of the empty house and sent it over, plus separate photos of the loft, the garage and the shed. Someone clearing a house from the far end of the country can't just pop round and check. The back door key went back in the door, the front key went back in the safe. One customer wrote afterwards: "Wow the guys have done an amazing job, cant believe it was only two of them."
Abbey Wood, two loads and a letterbox
A couple of years before that we did a three-bed house on the SE2 side, over towards Abbey Wood. Is a ten-minute walk from Lower Belvedere and the same job in practice. That one had two lofts and a garden shed. It went out as two full loads in one day rather than dragging it over two visits. Out came a fridge freezer, a mattress, a television, a POP-classed item of upholstery. The usual contents of a house that had been lived in properly for a long time.
The instructions came from a relative living abroad, mostly over WhatsApp because the phone number wouldn't dial cleanly from here. The family member who let us in had to be at work for the afternoon. So we agreed the simplest thing: finish, lock up, post the key back through the letterbox. Carpets stayed. Curtains stayed. The freestanding stuff went. It's worth saying out loud, because people assume a clearance means gutting the place. It only means what you tell us it means, and we'd rather have the list before the van sets off than argue about it in a hallway.
Where we work round here
Belvedere sits in the London Borough of Bexley, in Greater London now. Half the paperwork that comes to us still says Kent and old habits die hard round here. We cover the DA17 streets themselves — the hill up round Nuxley Road and Lessness Heath. The flatter part down towards the river — plus DA8 Erith next door, DA7 and DA6 in Bexleyheath, DA16 in Welling, DA14 and DA15 in Sidcup, and across the borough boundary into SE2 and SE28 for Abbey Wood and Thamesmead. Slade Green, Barnehurst, Crayford and Northumberland Heath all get the same van and the same rates. So does Dartford once you cross into Kent proper. If the property turns out not to be in DA17 at all, the neighbours have their own pages: house clearance in Erith for the DA8 side, house clearance in Bexleyheath for DA6 and DA7, and house clearance in Dartford for anything over the Kent boundary.
Belvedere station is on the North Kent line, one stop from Erith and one from Abbey Wood. If you're travelling in to meet us at a property that's usually the easiest way to do it. Abbey Wood picked up the Elizabeth line in 2022, which is why so many of the flats and small terraces around here changed hands afterwards. Why a fair few of our jobs in DA17 are now the tail end of a sale rather than a house someone still lives in.
The housing stock decides the day
The clearances here fall into rough types. Interwar semis with a garage on the side and a loft that's been used as a second attic for forty years. Victorian and Edwardian terraces up towards the Nuxley Road shops, narrow hallways, stairs that turn hard at the top, and no side access at all. Everything comes out through the front door. Post-war and council-built houses down on the lower ground. And the newer riverside flats, where the problem isn't the stairs but the loading bay and the fifteen-minute limit on it.
Parking is the thing that decides whether a job takes six hours or nine. On the hill roads there's often only room for one vehicle to pass, so if we can get the tipper on a drive we will. If we can't we'll want to know before the morning. Tell us when you book if there's a bay suspension, a barrier, a height restriction over a car park entrance, or a neighbour who parks across the dropped kerb. None of it stops us. It just changes what we bring and how many pairs of hands come with it.
A normal start here is nine in the morning at the door. A standard three-bed with a loft is a full working day. Lower Belvedere, out towards the marshes and the industrial ground by the river, tends to be easier for a large vehicle than the terraced hill above it. Worth knowing if you have the choice of where the van waits.
Garage and loft clearance in Belvedere
Garage and loft clearance is half of what we do in Belvedere, and on plenty of jobs it's the only part anyone actually wants. The house has been dealt with by the family and what's left is the bit nobody could face. The interwar semis on the hill mostly have a side garage with a loft above the beam. The newer riverside places have a lock-up in a block. We bring our own ladder and our own lighting rather than trusting a loft ladder that has been up there since the seventies. The men go up in pairs so nothing gets passed down one-handed. Half-boarded lofts are the awkward ones: joists on one side, boards on the other. A water tank in the middle you can't lean on.
Say when you book if it's a garage and loft only, because that changes the crew and the vehicle. Say too if there's a freezer in the garage that hasn't been switched on for a while, or paint and fuel cans on the shelf. Those don't travel in a general load — see below.
What goes where
Anything with genuine life left in it gets offered on before it gets tipped. Whole furniture, working tools, sealed household goods, decent clothing. There are reuse schemes and charity shops in Bexleyheath and Erith that take that sort of thing if it's clean and undamaged, and it's a better outcome than paying to weigh it in. What's actually finished goes to a permitted transfer station and is weighed and recorded there. Bexley residents will know the borough's own household waste site over at Crayford for their own car-boot loads; a house clearance is a different animal. It goes in on our licence, not yours. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679, and if you want the transfer notes for the estate file you only have to ask. The note is raised when the load is tipped, and we send our copy on with the paperwork.
Sofas, armchairs, footstools and mattresses with fire-retardant foam are handled apart from everything else. That's a legal requirement about persistent organic pollutants, not a charge we've dreamt up. It's why upholstery is priced per piece on the quote. Fridges and freezers are the same story for a different reason — degassing. Paint tins, propane cylinders, solvents and anything else with a hazard symbol can't just be thrown in with a general load. Tell us the quantity and we can usually take them on a separate arrangement; on one large job we ran the paints out in bulk as their own consignment.
Prices, probate house clearance and full houses
We do not put figures on this page, because a garage on its own and a three-bedroom house with a loft and outbuildings are not the same job and a printed number would mislead you about both. What you get instead is a proper quote before anyone sets off. If the house holds more than the description suggested you hear about it on the doorstep rather than at eleven in the morning with half a van gone. Give us the postcode, the number of rooms, and the awkward items. Piano, stair lift, chest freezer, garden waste, the shed nobody has opened — and you'll get a number you can actually put in front of a solicitor or a family.
Plenty of what we do in DA17 and SE2 is probate work, invoiced to an estate and organised by someone who doesn't live locally. Suits us; both the jobs above were run that way. A hoarder house clearance in Belvedere is ordinary work to us: if the house is overfull, floor to ceiling in places, say so plainly when you ring. It changes the crew size and the number of loads, nothing else. We've seen it before and we don't make a performance of it. Landlords and agents ring us for end of tenancy clearance across DA17 on the same terms, worked to the handover date with photographs of the empty rooms at the finish.
House clearance FAQs for Belvedere
Do you cover all of Belvedere, or only part of it?
All of it. DA17 is our own patch — the hill round Nuxley Road and Lessness Heath, the lower ground towards the marshes and the river, and everything between. If your property turns out to sit just over the line in Erith, Abbey Wood, Bexleyheath or Slade Green, it's the same van and the same crew, we just book it against the right district.
Can you invoice a solicitor on a probate clearance in Belvedere?
Yes. A lot of our probate house clearance work is instructed by an executor or a solicitor rather than by anyone living in the house, and we invoice the solicitor, the attorney or the executor of the estate direct. It can be settled from the estate. There's no deposit and no payment up front; the invoice follows the work. If the probate file needs the waste transfer notes attaching, ask and we'll send them on with it. The quote itself is free and doesn't commit you to anything.
Do I have to be there on the day?
No, and often nobody is. We've worked from a key safe code, from a key left with an agent. From a neighbour holding a spare. Tell us how you want the property left and how the key comes back. In the door, through the letterbox, back in the safe, returned to an agent. The team photographs and films the empty rooms at the end. Is what most people clearing a house from another county actually want.
Will you take up carpets, or leave them?
Whichever you say. Some clearances here are freestanding contents only — carpets, curtains and light fittings stay for the buyer or the landlord. Others want the floors up and the place swept through. It's worth writing the list out before we start rather than deciding in the hallway, especially if you're instructing us from a distance.
Are you licensed to take the waste away?
Yes — our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679, and everything that isn't reused or donated goes to a permitted transfer station where it's weighed and recorded. Upholstery with fire-retardant foam and fridges and freezers are dealt with separately, as the law requires. We're insured, and we've been doing this since 2007.
How do I get a quote for house clearance in Belvedere?
Ring 0800 046 5555 with the postcode district, the number of rooms and anything awkward. Piano, stair lift, chest freezer, a garage and loft that haven't been opened in years — or send photographs through the form on this page. That's usually enough for a fixed figure without anyone coming out first.
If you're clearing a property in Belvedere, Erith, Abbey Wood, Bexleyheath, Welling, Sidcup or anywhere else in Bexley, ring or email with the address district and a rough idea of what's in there. We're insured, we work to a fixed quote, and we'll send you photographs of the empty rooms when it's done.
