The Codicote job came to us from about as far away as a house clearance in Hitchin can be booked from. The person settling the estate was in Australia, ten hours ahead, and couldn't stand at the door to point at anything. It was a three-bed house with a garden shed and a cellar, out in the SG4 villages south of the town, and it went in our books back in 2018. A local estate agent whose office was just along the street held the key and agreed to let our team in on the morning and keep an eye on things while we worked.
The executor was honest about the limits of running it by email. "As indicated below I live in Australia and so will not be able to provide direction," they wrote, and set out the practicalities instead: the agent's mobile as the contact for the day, and a warning that midday in Hertfordshire was ten at night at their end, so replies would land overnight. None of that is a problem for us. A great many of our Hitchin clearances are handled by someone who lives nowhere near the house. What was unusual here is that the outbuildings were declared up front. Three bedrooms, a garden shed and the cellar, all named in the booking — because a shed and a cellar are exactly the sort of thing that gets left off a description and then found on the morning.
That is the ordinary shape of a house clearance in Hitchin: a property standing empty, a family scattered, and one person carrying the whole thing from a distance. We built the way we work around that. You do not need to be there. We collect a key from an agent, a neighbour or a solicitor, clear the house. Email photographs of every emptied room so whoever is holding the estate can see the job is done without getting on a plane.
The Hitchin streets and postcodes we cover
Hitchin sits in North Hertfordshire, in the East of England, and its two postcode districts are SG4 and SG5. SG5 runs across the north and west of the town and out to Ickleford, Pirton, Holwell, Great Offley, Shillington and Stotfold. SG4 takes in the south side, Walsworth, and a wide spread of villages including Codicote, Gosmore, St Ippolyts, Preston, Charlton, Kimpton, Whitwell, Breachwood Green, King's Walden and Little Wymondley. We clear across both. A house clearance in Hitchin town centre and one out in a lane past Preston are the same day's work to us, just a different drive at the end.
Within the town itself the housing changes street by street, and so does the job. Bearton and Oughtonhead in SG5 are largely inter-war and post-war family houses with lofts that have been filling up since the sixties. The Westmill estate is a different animal again, mostly post-war and with more flats and maisonettes in it than people expect of Hitchin. Walsworth and Purwell, over on the SG4 side of the railway, are terraces and semis with long thin gardens, which usually means a shed, sometimes a greenhouse, and now and then a garage down a shared back lane. The old streets in the middle of town are the oldest housing stock we handle here — narrow, listed in places, and stairs that were built before anyone owned a wardrobe you couldn't take apart.
One thing worth saying, because it catches executors out: the postal district and the council are not the same thing. Stotfold and Shillington carry Hitchin as their post town and sit in SG5, but administratively they are in Central Bedfordshire, not North Hertfordshire. If you are filling in forms for an estate and the address says Hitchin while the council tax bill says something else, that is why, and it makes no difference to us turning up.
We also work the neighbouring towns that share the branch. House clearance in Letchworth Garden City and Baldock are minutes up the A505, Knebworth sits south towards Stevenage. We cover house clearance in Stevenage too — and house clearance in Royston is out east on the Cambridgeshire border. If your late relative's house is in one of those and you found this page looking for Hitchin, the answer to whether we cover it is almost certainly yes. Ask when you call and we'll tell you the day we can get there.
Getting to the properties themselves is its own small puzzle. The older streets around the town centre and Bancroft are tight, with cars parked both sides and no room for a lorry to sit. We bring a van that will actually fit and, where the loading spot is awkward, we sort out a parking suspension with the council in advance rather than blocking a road on the morning. The Victorian terraces off Walsworth Road and the cottages in the villages often have no drive at all, which means everything comes out through a single front door and down a narrow hall. Cellars are the other thing we ask about early, as we did on the Codicote job. Whatever is down there comes back up by hand, a box at a time, and it changes how many of us need to be on the van. We plan for that. The van turns up stocked and the crew booked for the size of the job, so the day doesn't stall halfway.
Probate house clearance in Hitchin
Most of what we do here is probate work, and the money side of that is straightforward. When a solicitor, an executor or someone holding power of attorney is dealing with the estate, we invoice them directly, and the cost can be settled from the estate itself rather than out of anyone's own pocket. There's no deposit and no payment up front. The estimate is free and commits you to nothing. If you're an executor a long way from Hitchin, that's usually the cleanest route: we deal with the paperwork and the property, you approve it from wherever you are. More on how we handle probate house clearance generally is on its own page.
For the house itself, there is nothing to sort beforehand. You don't need to bag anything up or empty a single drawer. The team clears cupboards, wardrobes, the loft, the shed and, yes, the cellar, lifts carpets and underlay if you want them gone, and sweeps through at the end. If there are papers, photographs or small things of sentimental value you're worried about, tell us and we'll set them aside or post them on. On probate jobs a member of the crew keeps a watch for anything valuable turned up in the clear-out, and it comes back to the family rather than going out with the load.
Probate clearances also tend to run on somebody else's timetable — a completion date, an end of tenancy date that will not move, a sale that has been agreed before anybody has been through the loft. Tell us the date you're working back from when you first call. We would far rather book the right day three weeks out than promise you tomorrow and turn up with the wrong van. And if the grant hasn't come through yet and you only want the house looked at, that's fine too; plenty of the Hitchin probate jobs we quote in the spring get cleared in the summer.
What comes out, and where it goes
Anything with any use left in it we try to pass to a local charity or a reuse project rather than tip it. Furniture, white goods and household bits that still work do more good going back into a home than crushed into a lorry. Whatever genuinely can't be reused goes to a licensed transfer station, and every load is weighed and documented, so if you need a waste transfer note for the estate's records you have one.
That documentation matters because we do it properly. Our waste carrier licence is CBDU419679, and it covers everything that leaves a Hitchin property in our van.
A few things can't simply go on the lorry with the rest. Fridges and freezers have to be handled through their own route because of the gas in them. Upholstered sofas, armchairs and padded seating now fall under the POP rules, which means the foam inside has to be sent down a separate, regulated stream — that's the law since 2023, not a preference of ours. And paint, gas bottles, solvents and similar hazardous odds and ends can't ride in an ordinary mixed load at all; we'll tell you what needs to go elsewhere and, where we can, point you to how. None of it is a reason not to book — it's just the difference between a firm that knows the rules and one that fly-tips your late mother's sofa in a lane.
Not every job in SG4 and SG5 is a whole house, either. Garage and loft clearance is the commonest version of the smaller job. If what you have is a garage of rubble bags, a garden's worth of old fencing and a broken shed, that's house rubbish removal rather than a full clearance, and it's the same van and the same licence. Single heavy items — a piano, a chest freezer, a cast-iron bath left in a back bedroom — we'll come for on their own.
Hoarded and heavily filled houses
Not every Hitchin house clearance is a tidy three-bed with a shed. Some are packed floor to ceiling, room after room, with paths worn between the stacks. We take those on without any fuss and without a lecture. There's no extra drama about it and no comment on the state of the place — we've cleared far worse over the years and said nothing about it afterwards. If the property has been shut up a long time and there's a smell, damp or vermin to deal with, say so when you call so we bring the right kit and the right number of people. A cellar that's been closed since 2011 and a loft nobody's been into for a decade are normal to us, not a shock. There is more about how we approach hoarder house clearance on its own page, including what we do about paperwork buried in the piles.
How a house clearance in Hitchin runs on the day
The shape of it rarely changes. We arrive in the morning, walk the house with whoever has let us in — an agent, a neighbour, a family member, or nobody at all if we've been given the key — and agree what stays. That last part matters more than anything else said on the day: fitted appliances, curtains and carpets, a garden bench somebody wants, a sideboard the family is coming back for. Anything marked stays where it is.
Then we work from the top down, loft first, because it's easier to carry down past empty rooms than full ones. Sheds, garages and outbuildings come last, since they're usually the dirtiest part and nobody wants that walked through the house. On a house of that size out in the villages we'd normally expect it to be a day's work, but a cellar, a loft and a shed together can push it. We'd rather tell you that at the quote stage than at four in the afternoon.
When the house is empty we sweep through, photograph every room and send the pictures over. For an executor abroad those photographs are the whole handover. Then the keys go back where they came from — the agent, the solicitor, the key safe — and the waste paperwork follows by email.
Common questions about house clearance in Hitchin
Do I have to be at the property for a house clearance in Hitchin?
No. We regularly clear houses in SG4 and SG5 where nobody from the family is in the country. We collect the key from an estate agent, a solicitor, a neighbour or a key safe, clear the house and email photographs of every room when it's done.
Can you invoice a solicitor or executor for a probate clearance?
Yes. Where a solicitor, an executor or an attorney is handling the estate we invoice them directly, and it can be settled from the estate rather than by any one relative. There's no deposit, and the estimate is free and commits you to nothing.
Do you clear lofts, cellars, sheds and garages as well as the house?
Yes, and we'd ask you to mention them when you book. Outbuildings and cellars are the things most often left out of a description, and they're what turns a straightforward Hitchin house clearance into a longer day.
Is there anything you can't take away?
Fridges and freezers go down their own route because of the gas, upholstered furniture falls under the POP rules and has to be kept separate. Hazardous items such as paint, solvents and gas bottles can't travel in a mixed load. We'll tell you what needs to go elsewhere before we start.
Do you take on hoarded or heavily filled houses in Hitchin?
We do, and we do it without comment. Tell us honestly what's behind the door — depth of the piles, smell, damp, vermin — so we bring the right equipment and enough people, and so nothing is a surprise on the morning.
How far around Hitchin do you go?
All of SG4 and SG5, town and villages, plus Letchworth Garden City, Baldock, Knebworth, Stevenage and Royston. If you're just outside that, ask — the answer is usually yes.
Getting a figure for your clearance
The one thing we won't do is guess a number down the phone and then change it on the doorstep. What you get is a real, honest figure worked out from what's actually in the house, not a pitch designed to get us through the door. There are two ways to reach one. Call us on 0800 046 5555 and talk it through. The town, the type of property, roughly what's inside — or use the quote form on this page to send a few photographs of the rooms, the loft, the garage and any outbuildings. Photographs are quicker and more accurate than any description, and for an executor abroad they're often the only sensible way to do it.
We've been clearing houses since 2007, and Hitchin, Letchworth, Baldock and the SG villages have been part of that patch for a long time. Hitchin station puts King's Cross and Cambridge within easy reach on the East Coast Main Line. That is why so many of the town's estates are handled by people who moved away years ago and are now settling a parent's house from London or further. Some of them are twenty minutes down the road. The executor who booked that Codicote clearance was on the far side of the planet. Either way a house clearance in Hitchin is one call on 0800 046 5555, or the form on this page.
