Most house clearance in Oval is flat work. Upper floors of Victorian and Georgian terraces, maisonettes converted decades ago, estate blocks with one shared lift. A street outside where a Luton van cannot legally stop. We have been clearing properties since 2007, and the Oval end of Lambeth is one of the patches we know best.
The job at the front of the file for this round is a spring 2020 clearance in SW2, on the Brixton side of the ground we cover from Oval. It came in as probate work and it was never going to finish in one visit. The property was still lived in while the estate was being sorted out. We took away what could come out first and left the final clearance and the clean until it was empty. The person organising it put it plainly:
> "We have decided to book the final clearance and clean for when I have moved out. This will either be 5th March or 5th April. I will know later this week so will advise."
So we held the dates loosely and went back when the property was clear of people. It was booked as a verminous clearance, which is the trade term for a property where there has been an infestation and the contents have to be handled as contaminated rather than sorted out on the pavement. Thirteen mattresses came off that one address. A small fridge-freezer went separately, as anything with a refrigerant circuit has to. We put two teams on it rather than one. Two teams working two days empties a property that is being lived in around a moving date, and one team working four days does not.
Then there was a gap, and a return visit to finish. That is normal on estate work and nobody should be embarrassed about it.
Repeat house clearance work for a trade client in SW9
The other slice of our SW9 history is a run of bookings in the autumn of 2017 for a construction firm working out of SW9, a few minutes from Oval station. Three of them inside a month: two on the same day at the start of October, another at the end of it. They ran it as an account and rang us back rather than starting again with somebody new each time. Is about the only compliment a trade client ever pays you out loud.
Months later, at their year end, their bookkeeper wrote to us:
> "Please may you forward a few copy invoices."
We sent them the same week. An audit request is not glamorous to write about. But three bookings on the trot from a firm that spends its whole life in half-empty buildings says more about how we work than anything we could claim about ourselves.
Parking, permits and the cricket
Anyone who has tried to load a van around Kennington Park Road knows the problem. The A3 runs straight through the middle of this area as a red route, so there is no stopping on long stretches of it whatsoever. The side streets either side are almost entirely controlled parking. Our lads sort suspensions or permits with Lambeth in advance where a job needs one. Where it does not, we work out which end of the terrace has the best chance of a legal space and start from there.
Then there is the cricket. On a match day at the Oval the streets between the ground and the tube fill up early and stay full. Traffic on Harleyford Road and Kennington Oval crawls. We check fixtures before we book a big clearance within a few streets of the ground. It is a five-minute thing that saves an hour of shuffling a Luton van about.
Access inside is the other half of it. A lot of the flats round here are the upper floors of Victorian and Georgian terraces, converted decades ago. A single narrow staircase, a half-landing turn, and nothing resembling a lift. Wardrobes that went up in pieces come down in pieces. On the estate blocks off Brixton Road and Wandsworth Road it is the opposite problem: there is a lift. It is shared with everyone else in the block, so we work in short runs rather than blocking it for an hour.
Where the area starts and stops for us
Oval sits in the London Borough of Lambeth, and the round we cover from here takes in a broad spread of south London postcodes: SE11 around Kennington and the Oval itself, SW8 for Vauxhall and Nine Elms, SW9 for Stockwell and the Brixton edge, SW2 for Brixton and Tulse Hill, SW4 for Clapham, SW11 across into Battersea, SW12 for Balham, SE5 for Camberwell, SE24 for Herne Hill and Denmark Hill, SE21 for Dulwich, SE19 for Crystal Palace, SE1 for Bermondsey and SE27 for West Norwood. Camberwell and Dulwich fall to Southwark, Herne Hill is split between Southwark and Lambeth. Battersea and Balham are Wandsworth, which matters when it comes to permits and to which recycling centre a load ends up at.
Several of those places have pages of their own, written the same way this one was. There is house clearance in Kennington one stop north, house clearance in Brixton down the road where that 2020 job was, house clearance in Camberwell over the Southwark line, and house clearance in Battersea west along the river. If your property sits between two of them, ring us and we will tell you which crew is nearest on the day.
Getting to any of it is straightforward. Oval station on the Northern line is the obvious marker, with Kennington a stop north, Stockwell a stop south where the Northern and Victoria lines cross. Vauxhall just up the road for the Victoria line and the mainline, and Brixton, Loughborough Junction and Herne Hill all within a short run. We drive rather than travel in, obviously, but it is worth knowing if you are meeting us at a property you no longer live near.
What leaves the property, and where it goes
Furniture in decent order does not belong in a skip, and we do not treat it that way. Where something is sound and sellable we look for a South London charity shop, community project or reuse scheme that will take it. Lambeth and Southwark both have organisations that will, and a sofa that is four years old should not be crushed. What genuinely cannot be reused is taken to a permitted transfer station and weighed in with paperwork against it. There is a record of every load. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679.
A few things need their own route:
- Sofas, armchairs and other upholstered seating with fire-retardant foam are separated out and processed through the dedicated regulated stream that the POP rules require. They cannot ride in a mixed load.
- Fridges, freezers and anything with a refrigerant circuit are taken out and handled on their own, degassed properly rather than tipped in with everything else. Is why the fridge-freezer on that SW2 job travelled by itself.
- Paint tins, aerosols, gas canisters and old chemicals from under the sink are outside what a clearance van is permitted to carry. We will flag them and point you at the council's household hazardous route.
- Loose paperwork, bank letters, deeds, old bills, is bagged and either handed to whoever is dealing with the estate or destroyed, whichever you ask for.
- Mattresses are kept apart from the general load and go to a site that takes them. Is why thirteen of them out of one Brixton property made for a long day.
How a day of house clearance in Oval runs
On what it comes to: ring the office on 0800 046 5555, or send photographs of each room, the loft and the garden through the form on this page. You will get a figure back. That is the only honest answer anybody can give you down a phone line. Someone has to see what is actually in the property first.
The day itself is boring by design. We arrive when we said we would, walk the property with you or with whoever holds the keys, agree what stays. Start at the top of the house so nothing has to be carried past a room we have already finished. Anything that looks like a document, a photograph or a valuable is put aside for you rather than judged by us. At the end you get the property swept through and the keys back the same day.
Flat clearance in SE11, SW8 and SW9
A one-bedroom flat clearance in SE11 is typically a half-day. Three flights of stairs and a half-landing turn will stretch that. The Nine Elms and Vauxhall end of SW8 has newer blocks with goods lifts and a loading bay, which is the easiest work in the borough, and the older converted houses in SW9 are the hardest. Everything comes down a staircase built for one person carrying shopping.
Garage and loft clearance in Oval
Garage and loft clearance in Oval is rarely the whole job. It is very often the part people forget when they book. Lofts round here are hatch-only, no fixed ladder, and whatever went up there went up thirty years ago in one piece and has to come down the same way. Garages tend to sit in a block behind the terrace, sometimes with a door that has not opened since the last owner shut it. Tell us about the garage and the loft when you first call. A garage and loft clearance added on the morning of the job is the one thing that turns a half-day into a full one.
End of tenancy and rubbish removal
Landlords and managing agents round Stockwell and Clapham use us between tenancies, when a flat has to be back on the market by Friday. If it is only a room or two of leftovers rather than a whole property, that is house rubbish removal rather than a full clearance, and it is a shorter booking.
Probate, executors and properties that have got out of hand
A good share of the house clearance work here comes through executors and family members who live nowhere near London and are trying to deal with a flat in Kennington or a terrace in Herne Hill remotely. On a probate house clearance we will take keys from a managing agent or a solicitor's office, send photographs of each room before and after, put anything that looks like a document or a valuable to one side rather than making the decision ourselves, and write an inventory for the file if the estate needs one.
Who the paperwork goes to is a question we get asked before anything else, and the answer is simple. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly. It can be settled from the estate rather than out of anybody's own pocket. There is no deposit to find before we start, and nothing to hand over on the doorstep. The customer on that SW2 probate job asked us for exactly this, and was almost apologetic about it:
> "Not sure if it makes any difference but the invoice should be addressed to the executors of the estate."
It makes no difference to us at all. It is the normal arrangement on probate house clearance in Oval. Half the reason solicitors keep our number.
Hoarder house clearance in Oval
And if the property is packed floor to ceiling, years of things kept, rooms you can only enter sideways, a garden you cannot cross, that is a normal booking for us and not a special case. Hoarder house clearance in Oval comes up more often than people imagine, in every kind of street in this borough, in owner-occupied terraces as much as in flats. Where there has been an infestation as well, as there had been on that Brixton job, the property is cleared as verminous work and treated before anyone else goes in. We turn up, we get on with it, and there is no commentary from the crew about the state of the place.
Common questions about house clearance in Oval
Which areas do you actually cover from Oval? SE11, SW8, SW9, SW2, SW4, SW11, SW12, SE5, SE24, SE21 and SE27. Takes in Kennington, Vauxhall, Nine Elms, Stockwell, Brixton, Tulse Hill, Clapham, Battersea, Balham, Camberwell, Herne Hill, Dulwich and West Norwood.
How do I find out what a house clearance in Oval comes to? Ring 0800 046 5555 or send photographs of every room, plus the loft and the garden, through the form on this page. You will get a figure and a date back.
Can you invoice a solicitor or an executor? Yes. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, it can be settled from the estate. There is no deposit up front.
Do you take fridges and mattresses? Yes, both, but they leave the property separately from the general load. The rules on refrigerant circuits and on mattresses require it.
Can you do a garage and loft clearance at the same time? Yes. It is much better done on the same visit. Just say so when you call, so the day is planned around it.
What will you not take? Paint, aerosols, gas bottles, garden chemicals and anything else classed as household hazardous waste. We will point you at the council route for those.
Talking to us
Call 0800 046 5555 or use the form on this page with the postcode, the property type and a rough idea of the contents. You will get a real answer the same working day, along with a date. We have been at this since 2007. We are licensed under waste carrier registration CBDU419679, insured for both the property and the contents while we are working. We will happily give that registration to your agent or your solicitor if they ask for it.
