We have been doing house clearance in Canterbury since 2007, and most of it looks nothing like the brochure version. Take a July job in CT1, inside the ring road. A gas bottle was the last item off the van's tail lift that afternoon, and it went away on its own paperwork, on its own. Bottles like that cannot travel in with the sofas and the wardrobes — they have to go somewhere licensed to accept them, separately, and that is a rule we work to rather than a favour we do.
The rest of that clearance was a full load and then a second load the same afternoon, plus a mattress. The person dealing with the estate was not from the city — they were coming across from the Medway side and had been running the whole thing at arm's length, by email and by photograph. They wanted to walk the empty rooms themselves before anything was settled. This is what they wrote to the office: "I shall be visiting the property tomorrow, just in case I have any queries and I shall pay your invoice on my return home tomorrow night."
That is a fairly ordinary Canterbury day for us. Some are not.
Eight loads over two days in CT4
South and west of the city sits the biggest job we have done in this postcode area. It was booked through a solicitor's office acting for the estate rather than by a family member, which is common enough with probate work and makes no difference at all to how the day runs.
Day one was a full load and one more load on top of it, plus two mattresses. Then we came back. Day two ran to a full load and five further loads — six in a single day, van out to the transfer station and straight back, again and again, with the team carrying while it was away. Eight loads altogether across the two days.
What it means in practice is this: a house of that size is not a morning's work, it is not one van, and nobody should be told on the doorstep that it will be "done by lunchtime". We told the solicitor at the outset that it would take two days and it took two days. Nobody had to guess and nobody had a surprise sprung on them at four o'clock.
CT4 is the villages south of the city — Bridge, Bekesbourne, Barham, Petham, Chartham, Chilham, Upper Hardres, Stelling Minnis, Elham. Lanes, verges, farm gates, and the occasional drive you would not take a Luton down in wet weather. We look at it on the day and park where the van will come out again.
Whitstable and Tankerton, the coast side
Whitstable gives us steady work and it has its own awkwardness — the seafront roads, the alleys behind the high street, the parking that goes from empty in February to impossible in July. Seasalter and Chestfield are easier. Yorkletts and Dargate, out towards Faversham, are a run down the lanes and nothing worse than that.
If the property you are dealing with is on that side, there is a page of its own for house clearance in Whitstable with the local detail on it.
Herne Bay
Beltinge, Greenhill, Studd Hill and Herne itself we treat as one run. Herne Bay station is a five-minute run from most of it. A good share of the work along that stretch is flat clearance rather than houses. First-floor flats above the parades, no lift, everything down one staircase and out through a door that opens straight onto a pavement people are walking along. We plan those around the pavement, not around ourselves. There is a separate page for house clearance in Herne Bay.
Further round the coast we work the Thanet towns and the port towns as well, and both have pages of their own: house clearance in Margate and house clearance in Dover.
Broad Oak, Sturry and CT2
North of the city, CT2 covers Hales Place, St Stephen's, Rough Common, Blean, Tyler Hill, Broad Oak, Fordwich and out to Sturry, where there is a station on the Ramsgate line. A fair share of what we clear here belongs to someone who is not in the county — a son in the north, a daughter abroad, an executor who has never seen the house. Keys come through an agent or a neighbour, we photograph every room when it is done, and the paperwork goes wherever it needs to go.
Canterbury West and Canterbury East are both walkable from CT1. If a family member is coming down by train to meet us at a property, we can work to a train time rather than making them work to ours.
CT3 runs east and north-east — Littlebourne, Wickhambreaux, Ickham, Wingham, Ash, Staple, Preston, Aylesham, Nonington. Aylesham in particular is rows of solid inter-war colliery housing with long back gardens, and about half of what comes out of those is shed and garage rather than house.
What we cover, and what happens to the load
CT1, CT2, CT3 and CT4 are our own districts here — the city inside and outside the walls, and the villages either side of it. We also run to CT5 and CT6 on the coast, and out to Faversham, Sandwich and Ashford without making a fuss about it.
Anything still usable is offered on before it is treated as waste — furniture, kitchen equipment, unopened bedding, books, tools. Around here that means a reuse project or one of the charity shops in the city, and it is worth doing properly rather than as a gesture. The remainder is weighed in at a permitted transfer station and the paperwork exists for every single load; ask and you get a copy. We hold waste carrier licence CBDU419679 and the company is insured for the work and for being in your property.
Sofas, armchairs and anything else with foam in it are separated out and sent through the regulated route the POPs rules have required since 2023 — that is why upholstery does not simply go on top of the general load. Fridges and freezers are handled under their own rules too, and mattresses go off to a separate stream. Paint, oils and solvents cannot be carried mixed in with a house load. Tell us in advance and we will either arrange it separately or point you at the county's household waste site on Vauxhall Road, which takes small quantities from residents.
Garage and loft clearance in Canterbury
A garage and loft clearance on its own is a normal booking here. The loft with the ladder missing, the garage on the newer estates that has not had a car in it for years, the shed at the bottom of a village garden out in CT4. Name all three when you ring — they decide the number of loads more often than the rooms do.
Getting a van to your door
Inside the walls, CT1 is tight. Some of the terraces have no frontage at all and the nearest legal stopping point can be forty metres away, which affects nothing except how many trips across the pavement the team makes. We handle the parking side ourselves where we can, and if a bay suspension is needed through the council we will tell you early enough to arrange it, because those take a few working days.
Student lets around St Stephen's and the university end are a category of their own. An end of tenancy job there is four rooms of flat-pack, three mattresses and a kitchen nobody has emptied, all of it going in one visit because the check-out is at ten the next morning. We do end of tenancy work for landlords and agents across CT1 and CT2, and plain flat clearance — one flat, one team, one day — is probably the single most common booking we take in the city.
Loft and garage clearance usually comes as part of the same visit rather than as a separate trip. Say what is up there when you ring, so the right number of people turn up.
The money side
We do not publish figures, and there is a reason: what a clearance takes depends on what is in the rooms, and a number printed on a website tells you nothing about your house.
So it works like this. Ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and describe the property, or send a handful of photographs through the form on this page — a shot of each room, the loft hatch, the garage, the garden. You get a figure back and the first date we can do it. If the property turns out to hold more than the description suggested, you hear about it while the team is standing in it, not afterwards.
Probate, executors and letting agents
A good half of the house clearance Canterbury work we take on is probate. Probate clearance is its own thing: nobody is in a hurry until suddenly everybody is, the person instructing us usually lives nowhere near Kent, and there is often a solicitor in the middle of it. We are used to waiting on grant of probate, and we are used to being the ones who send room-by-room photographs to someone who will never see the house empty in person.
On the paperwork we will say it plainly. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly — you do not have to pay out of your own pocket and claim it back. Payment can come from the estate. There is no deposit: the invoice follows the work, not the booking. If the estate is waiting on probate before anything can be released, tell us and we will wait too.
For a hoarder house clearance the approach changes — more people, more days, and a slower start while we work out what is genuinely being kept. A house that has quietly filled up over thirty years is not a problem to us and never gets remarked on. We just bring a bigger van and more hands.
Common questions about house clearance in Canterbury
Can you invoice our solicitor or the executor? Yes. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, payment can come from the estate, and there is no deposit — the invoice follows the work.
Do we have to clear the house first? No. Leave it as it is. If there are things staying — a chair, a washing machine still in its wrapper, the carpets — tell us before the day and we will mark them so nothing goes near the van.
Do you take fridges, freezers and mattresses? Yes, all of them, but each goes through its own regulated route rather than in with the general load. Same for upholstered furniture under the POPs rules. Just tell us what there is beforehand.
Do you do end of tenancy and flat clearance in Canterbury? We do. End of tenancy work for landlords and agents across the city, and flat clearance in CT1 and CT2 including first-floor flats with no lift.
How much of the Canterbury district do you cover? CT1, CT2, CT3 and CT4 are our own patch, and we work the coast at CT5 and CT6 as well. The nearby towns have their own pages — house clearance in Whitstable, house clearance in Herne Bay, house clearance in Margate and house clearance in Dover.
What happens to everything you take? Usable items are offered on for reuse, the rest is weighed in at a permitted transfer station, and you can have the disposal paperwork for every load.
If you are dealing with a property in Canterbury or the villages around it, ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and describe it. Or send a handful of photographs through the form on this page, and we will come back with a figure and the first date we can do it.
