House clearance in Southam is mostly a lanes job. The town itself is small, CV47, with a ring of villages round it, and a good half of what gets booked as house clearance Southam turns out to be a mile or three out of the town. A cottage on a single-track road, a bungalow behind a farm gate, a semi on an estate built when the cement works still ran. So a Southam house clearance usually starts with somebody moving a car so the van can get past.
Here is one from a December. It had been booked as a one-load job and it plainly wasn't one. By the middle of the morning the crew could see there was another van's worth still standing in the rooms. Rather than put a return visit in the diary for later in the week they ran the second load the same day and had the house finished before the light went. Two mattresses came out of it. A small fridge-freezer as well, which goes off to a degassing point rather than onto a tip pile. The gas has to be drawn out under supervision and there is no way round that, however small the unit is.
The arranging had been split between two people in the family, which is commoner than you would think. One had done the booking and given us the details; the other settled up the same evening and asked, in the same email, "Would you send the receipt to this email". She had it that night. Paperwork matters to people more than the lifting does, sometimes. A receipt, a waste transfer note, something to go in the file with everything else.
On what a job comes to, the answer here is the same one you would get on the phone: ring the office on 0800 046 5555 and describe the property, or send photographs of the rooms through the form on this page. You will get a figure back. Guessing at it in writing helps nobody.
Southam, and the villages that ring it
Southam sits in CV47, in the Stratford-on-Avon council area of Warwickshire, where the A423 crosses the A425. Coventry one way, Banbury the other, Leamington west, Daventry east. No railway station of its own, and none for a long time. Nearly everybody drives to Leamington Spa for a train. Practical for us as well: crews come in off the A425 from Leamington, or up the Fosse Way from the Stratford side.
Around it are the villages people actually mean when they ring us and say Southam. Bishops Itchington, Long Itchington, Napton-on-the-Hill, Ladbroke, Stockton, Priors Marston, Aston le Walls, Appletree and Arlescote, and Aynho and Adderbury just over the Oxfordshire line. Further out across the same run of postcodes we cover Stratford-upon-Avon and Wilmcote in CV37, Shipston-on-Stour and the Brailes in CV36, Henley-in-Arden and Wootton Wawen in B95, Studley in B80. Bidford-on-Avon and Salford Priors in B50. Stratford-upon-Avon has its own station off Alcester Road; Henley-in-Arden and Wootton Wawen sit on the North Warwickshire line. Shipston is the awkward one — no station anywhere near, Moreton-in-Marsh over the Gloucestershire border is the nearest platform — so everything there is done on the road.
North and west of Southam the bigger towns have pages of their own, and there is a fair bit of crossover in a working week. A Southam house clearance in the morning and one up the road after lunch is an ordinary enough day for a crew. If you are nearer to those than to us, start there instead: house clearance in Leamington Spa for the town most people here drive to for a train anyway, house clearance in Kenilworth a little further north, and house clearance in Coventry once you are over the county line.
An empty house in Stratford, organised from Cornwall
March 2022, a four-bedroom house on the Stratford side of CV37. The person arranging it lived in Cornwall, the better part of two hundred and eighty miles away. Is more common than you'd think. Instructions came by email over three weeks; a relative who lived locally held the keys and met the crew on site. She asked that we phone half an hour before we arrived so she could get there and open up. She walked the house with the team at the end to check it was as she wanted. We did both. Little things, but they're the difference between a clearance that lands well and one that doesn't.
The house had been standing empty for about a year. Most of the furniture had already gone, so what was left was the fiddly stuff that people underestimate: every carpet and all the underlay, curtains, blinds, a hall table, the white goods in the kitchen and the utility room. A fridge-freezer sitting in the garage that had to come out through the up-and-over door. Garden furniture from the back. The loft, unusually, was genuinely empty — someone had already done it. Brief was simple enough: house and garage left with nothing in them but the fixtures.
Garage and loft are the two that catch people out. This one caught us out the other way about: the garage still had a fridge-freezer standing in it while the loft had already been emptied, which is the reverse of how it normally goes. Garage and loft clearance in Southam is more often the whole job than a part of it. A house sold, the rooms done by the family, and a hatch nobody has been through since the nineties left for us.
There was a deadline behind it, as there often is. Completion was set for the Wednesday, so the clearance had to be finished and signed off on the Saturday before. Carpets and underlay eat time — cutting, rolling, carrying. A four-bed's worth is a lot of trips down a staircase. Hence another early start. Completion dates get set without much thought for how long a house takes to empty; we'd rather know the date up front and put the right number of people on it.
Where a load goes after it leaves
Nothing goes on the van without somebody deciding where it's going. Usable furniture, kitchenware, tools, books, decent bric-a-brac gets offered on first. To charity shops in Southam and Leamington and to reuse projects around the county, because a wardrobe that still shuts is worth more standing in a shop than crushed in a skip. Fridges and freezers go to a proper degassing point; you can't just tip them, the gas has to come out under supervision. Metal, wood, card and clean hardcore get separated at the tip end. Whatever's genuinely finished goes into the regulated stream at a permitted transfer station, and there's a transfer note for every load with our carrier number on it. CBDU419679, registered with the Environment Agency. Ask for the paperwork and you'll get it, no fuss.
Upholstered furniture is the one that surprises people. Sofas, armchairs, dining chairs with padded seats, footstools — since the POP rules came in, that foam can't go to landfill or ordinary recycling at all. It has to be burnt at high temperature, item by item, at a site set up to do it and to record that it was done. Mattresses are the same story for a different reason, handled separately and counted one at a time rather than tipped in with the general load. Tell us how many of each there are when you ring and the day plans itself.
A few things we can't put in the back of a normal van: half-used tins of paint and thinners, gas cylinders, car batteries, asbestos sheeting off an old garage roof, medical sharps. Different licence, different tipping route. Say what's there when you ring and we'll either arrange a specialist collection or point you at the county's household recycling centres, which take small quantities free.
Probate work, and getting paid from the estate
December 2020, another CV37 address, a probate clearance handled entirely by the firm winding up the estate. Two loads on the day rather than a return later in the week, a mattress, regulated disposal on the rest. The paperwork sent through to the people administering the estate with the case reference on it. That is the ordinary arrangement for probate house clearance in Southam as well: we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly, the work can be paid for out of the estate rather than out of an executor's own pocket, and there is no deposit. Nothing is asked for up front, and the invoice follows the work rather than coming before it. Executors are often relieved to hear that, because a good many have been told otherwise somewhere along the way.
Probate houses round here tend to be one of two kinds. A village cottage or ex-council semi lived in by the same person for forty years, everything kept, nothing thrown, lofts and sheds and a garage you can't get the door open on. Or one already half-emptied by the family, where the awkward remainder. Carpets, appliances, garden stuff — is all that's left. Both are straightforward. The first just takes longer. Probate is a good half of the house clearance Southam sends our way. The executor is very often two counties off, which is why we phone before we arrive and photograph the empty rooms afterwards.
Full houses, and getting a figure
Some houses are packed floor to ceiling. Rooms you edge into sideways, a bathroom used for storage, a hallway with a path through it. We clear those regularly and nobody on the crew comments, then or later. Hoarder house clearance is the term for it if you want one; on the phone it is enough to say the house is full. If that's the house you're ringing about, say so plainly. It changes the number of people and the number of loads we book, not our willingness to come.
For the figure itself there is one route and it is a short one. Ring 0800 046 5555 and describe the property, or send photographs. A few shots of each room, the loft hatch, the garage, the garden — through the form on this page. You will get an honest answer back off that, and it is free and puts you under no obligation. Most people never need us to drive out to Southam before they know where they stand.
Getting it in the diary
Ring the office, or email, and describe the property: bedrooms, roughly how full, loft, garage, shed, a garden that needs doing, and whether a van can get near the front door or whether it's a hundred yards along a village lane. Parking matters more than people expect in the older parts of Southam and in tight-lane villages like Napton and Harbury. If the van sits further off, the carry adds time, and we'd rather know that beforehand than discover it on the morning. Tell us the completion date if there is one. We'll say honestly whether it can be met.
We have been doing this since 2007, insurance is in place for the work and for goods in transit, and the carrier registration is above. Whether it's an emptied four-bed with the sale hanging on it or one crowded bungalow in a CV47 village, it's the same crew and the same way of working. It starts with a phone call to 0800 046 5555.
Common questions about house clearance in Southam
Can you invoice a solicitor on a probate house clearance?
Yes. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly. Payment can come out of the estate rather than a relative's own pocket. There is no deposit, and the invoice follows the work.
Do I have to be there on the day?
No. Keys come from a neighbour, an agent or a key safe. We email photographs of every emptied room the same day. Plenty of our CV47 work is arranged from another county.
Do I need to sort or pack anything first?
No. The team empties wardrobes, drawers and cupboards as they find them, lifts carpets and underlay if you want them gone, and sweeps through at the end. Tell us what is staying and it stays.
How long does a clearance take?
Most houses are a single day. A packed property, or one with a full loft, a garage and outbuildings, can run to two. We say so at the walk round rather than at four in the afternoon.
Is there anything you cannot take?
Paint, solvents, gas bottles, garden chemicals and asbestos cannot travel in a mixed load. Fridges, freezers, mattresses and upholstered furniture all go, but each on its own permitted route.
Do you cover the villages as well as the town?
Yes. A clearance out at Napton, Harbury or Priors Marston is the same day's work as one in Southam itself. Tell us about the lane and the turning space when you ring.
