Most house clearance in Monmouth, in what used to be Gwent on the eastern edge of south Wales, starts with photographs rather than a visit, and that one did too. "Two photos show the worst space which is the utility room." That message reached the office before we had so much as loaded a van — a three-bedroom house in NP25, garage attached, garden gone to seed, and a family sorting it out between them from more than one address. The clearance took two separate days in May 2023, and it is still the one the lads bring up when Monmouth comes into conversation.
The first day was the heavy end of it. Three men at the door for nine in the morning, one full Luton load out and away, then a second load the same afternoon once the first had been tipped. Even with two loads gone the garage was not finished. The second visit went in for the Tuesday a fortnight later, and it was the other half of the work. The last of the contents out, the garden cut back and cleared, a chest freezer and a small fridge-freezer taken away under the regulated route that white goods have to travel. Then a clean right through the house. There were more rooms in it than a three-bedroom clean usually covers, and all of them were done.
What made that job worth remembering was the instructions, and I say that with respect. Everything the family were keeping had to be gathered into the main living room once the clearing and cleaning were finished. That the packing could be done later in one place instead of hunting through six. The garage was the exception — "This with the exception of items in the garage of course !" — and what sat in there stayed exactly where it sat. Bags of photograph albums and books were already stacked on the floor ready to go by car, and nothing marked like that goes anywhere near our tailgate. The tins of paint and the television were to stay in the house as well. That came to us in writing before the second day, and both were still where they were when we locked up.
Then there was the last request, which we still repeat to each other: "A small additional request, is to close down all toilet lids before taking final photos please. ( Remove toilet lid bricks to garden !)" Both done. We photograph every finished clearance so that whoever is responsible can see the condition the house was left in, and it is a fair point that nobody wants those pictures with the lids up.
The other thing that customer asked for, quite rightly, was the paperwork. The waste transfer notes covering every day and half-day we were on site, and the addresses of the charity outlets the reusable furniture had gone to. Both went out. That sheet is what proves where a houseful of belongings actually went once it left the drive, and an executor is entitled to have it on file. We send it without being asked twice.
The postcodes we work from here
Monmouth sits in Monmouthshire, in the south-east corner of Wales, and the districts we cover off the back of it run further than the town. NP25 is Monmouth and the villages around it. Chepstow is next and the Wye valley below Tintern, and house clearance in Chepstow has its own page since it is the town we cross into most often. Caldicot is covered, Magor and Rogiet, Usk is on the same run and Raglan, and is Abergavenny under the Blorenge and the Skirrid. house clearance in Abergavenny is arranged exactly as it is here, off photographs and a phone call.
Caerleon is over that way, and the valleys run up the valley towards Pontypool, where house clearance in Pontypool tends to mean the terraced streets on the hillsides. Carry on west past that and gets you to Blackwood in the Caerphilly valleys; house clearance in Blackwood is a longer run from here, but it is still a single working day. GL16 is the odd one out: cross the river and you are in Gloucestershire, in Coleford and the Forest of Dean, and English rather than Welsh. It is a fifteen-minute drive from Agincourt Square, so we treat it as the same round.
The town has had no railway station since the mid-sixties, when Troy closed with the Wye Valley line, and that shapes how these jobs get arranged. Anyone coming by train to meet us gets off at Abergavenny on the Marches line, or at Chepstow, or at Lydney on the Gloucestershire bank, and drives the last stretch on the A40 or the A466. If you are travelling that distance for a nine o'clock start, say so when you book and we will hold the time properly rather than leave you standing at a locked door.
Getting a van up to the house
The old part of town does not give you much room. Monnow Street is broad at the top and pinches in badly at the bottom, and the Monnow Bridge. The gated one, the last fortified river bridge standing in Britain — is not a route for a Luton in any circumstances. Around Overmonnow the terraces have next to no off-street parking. Wyesham means crossing the water and climbing. The lanes running up the hillside towards the Kymin are steep, high-hedged and single-track in stretches. We will usually carry a bit further on foot rather than try to reverse a long wheelbase round a blind bend with a stone wall on one side.
None of that stops a clearance happening; it changes how we plan the day. Tell us where a van can honestly stand, whether there are residents' bays. How many steps sit between the front door and the kerb, and the walking distance is planned in instead of turning up as a surprise at nine in the morning. Out in the villages — Rockfield, Dixton, Mitchel Troy, the lanes towards Trellech and Llandogo — the difficulty reverses. Space to park is not the issue. Getting a loaded van back down a soft farm track is.
The kinds of house clearance people ask us for in Monmouth
Whole houses are the bulk of it, but not all of it, and the sort of job you are booking changes the shape of the day more than the size of the house does.
Probate house clearance in Monmouth
Most of what we empty in NP25 is estate work of one kind or another. A probate house clearance in Monmouth usually reaches us through an executor or a solicitor rather than through anybody who lives in the house, and the timing is rarely in anyone's gift. The grant comes when it comes, the buyer wants the keys sooner. We can hold a date and move it, we can go in and clear only what everybody has agreed on, and we can leave a room untouched while the family work it out between them. Anything that looks like paperwork, jewellery or cash is set aside rather than loaded — say so at the start and the crew look as they go. Our probate house clearance page covers the rest of how that works.
Flat clearance and end of tenancy clearance in Monmouth
A flat clearance above the shops in the middle of town is its own sort of day — one staircase, no lift, and a van that has to stand where it does not block the street. Landlords and managing agents ring us for something different. An end of tenancy clearance is a house or flat emptied to broom-clean between tenants. The furniture a departing tenant left behind, the mattress nobody wanted, the fridge with the door taped shut, carpets lifted if you want them lifted. Around Overmonnow and the newer estates that is often a half-day job, and it is booked tight against a check-out date, so we would rather be told the deadline than discover it.
Garage and loft clearance in Monmouth
Not everything is a whole house. Garage and loft clearance in Monmouth is one of the commonest calls we get. The loft that has been boarded and filled since the children moved out, the garage whose up-and-over door has not opened in years, the shed at the end of the garden. Ladders and hatches slow a day down far more than people expect, and a garage packed to the roof takes longer than the three bedrooms underneath it. If it is a single load rather than a house, house rubbish removal is the same crew and the same van.
What a house clearance in Monmouth costs
We do not print figures on this page, and there is a plain reason for it: no two houses in Monmouth hold the same amount, and a number written here would be a guess about yours. So we do it the other way round. Ring the office on 0800 046 5555, or send photographs of the rooms that worry you most through the form on this page. You will get a figure and a date back, usually inside a working day. The quote is free and it commits you to nothing.
We would far rather work that out over the telephone, from photographs and a room-by-room description, than arrive with the van outside and start bargaining on the step. If the crew opens a loft or a garage and finds substantially more than was described, you are told before another thing is loaded, and the decision stays yours.
Where the work is probate, we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly. The person arranging it does not have to put their own money in front of it, payment can come out of the estate once matters are settled, and there is no deposit to find before we start.
What the van cannot legally carry
A few things fall outside what a house clearance vehicle is permitted to take. Half-used tins of paint, gas bottles off a patio heater or a caravan, garden chemicals, old fuel, asbestos sheet off a garage roof. All of those need their own disposal route, and we will tell you plainly where they have to go instead of quietly slipping them onto the load. Upholstery is its own case. Sofas, armchairs and padded chairs contain flame retardants classed as persistent organic pollutants, so the regulations require them to be kept apart from everything else and destroyed through a controlled process. That is why a three-piece suite is loaded, logged and sent off separately, while a wardrobe of the same size is not.
Houses that have been filling up quietly for forty years are ordinary work to us and we make no comment about them, on the day or afterwards. If there is cash, jewellery or paperwork likely to be buried in among it, tell the crew at the start and they will look as they go rather than after everything is on the van.
When you are handling it from another county
Plenty of the properties we empty around Monmouth belong to people who do not live in Wales. Another house clearance we did in NP25 went out as a single Luton load with one mattress on it. The invoice travelled to an address in East Sussex, because the person responsible had never lived within a hundred miles of the place. That arrangement is normal here and it works. We can take keys from an agent, a neighbour or a relative, invoice you, the estate or the solicitor dealing with the grant, and wait where waiting is what the probate timetable requires. Photographs of every emptied room, plus the transfer note, mean you can account for the whole job without setting foot in the house.
It is worth saying that we have been doing this since 2007, and a good half of the calls come from people who have never seen the property they are responsible for. Nobody needs to take a day off work to stand in an empty hallway with us.
Where everything ends up
Furniture and household goods with real use left in them are offered on locally before anything else is considered. Monmouthshire has charity shops and reuse outlets that will happily take a sound wardrobe or a working mower, and a sound item passed on is one less thing broken up for scrap. What is genuinely finished goes to a permitted transfer station to be sorted and recycled, and each load is logged and weighed on the way in. Monmouthshire County Council keeps a household site outside town for the boot-load of rubbish you can shift yourself; a house full of furniture is trade waste and needs a registered carrier behind it. Ours is registration CBDU419679, and the firm is fully insured for the work.
Common questions about house clearance in Monmouth
Do you cover the villages as well as the town? Yes. NP25 runs well past the town boundary, and Rockfield, Dixton, Mitchel Troy, Trellech, Llandogo and the lanes towards the Kymin are all the same round for us. Cross-border work in Coleford and the Forest of Dean is routine too.
Can you invoice the solicitor or the executor instead of me? Yes, and it is how most estate work here is settled. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, the payment can come out of the estate, and there is no deposit — nothing is asked for up front.
How do I get a price for a house clearance in Monmouth? Ring 0800 046 5555 or send photographs of the rooms through the form on this page, along with a note about the loft, the garage and the shed. You will have a figure and a date back, usually the same working day, and it commits you to nothing.
Will I get proof of where everything went? Yes. Every clearance comes with a waste transfer note, and we photograph each finished room before we lock up. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679 and it can be checked on the Environment Agency's public register. If you want the charity outlets named as well, ask and we will list them.
Can you do just a garage and loft, or an end of tenancy clearance, rather than the whole house? Yes to both. A garage, a loft, a shed, a single room, one item too heavy for a car. All of it is normal work, and an end of tenancy clearance booked against a check-out date is one of the things we do most.
How long does a house clearance in Monmouth take? A flat or a half-empty terrace is usually a day. A full three-bedroom house with a garage behind it can run to two, as the May 2023 job in NP25 did. If a garden tidy or a clean is wanted afterwards that is generally the second day rather than the first.
If you want a price for a house in Monmouth, Chepstow, Abergavenny, Usk, Caldicot or over the border in the Forest, send photographs of the rooms that worry you most and tell us about the loft, the garage and the shed. Nobody has ever put us off with a picture. Call 0800 046 5555 and you will get a figure and a date, usually inside a working day.
