Southwick sits a couple of miles out of Trowbridge on the Frome road, still BA14, a village of stone terraces along a street with nowhere much to put a Luton. The house clearance we did there was booked from Hampshire — the person dealing with it lived over in Basingstoke and never came across to Wiltshire for the day at all. Keys, instructions, and the rest was ours to sort out.
It was a single-load house clearance. One team, one day, the whole houseful out and away to a permitted transfer station with the paperwork to match. There is nothing on the invoice for a fridge, for a mattress, for a POP item or a gas bottle. That tells you the shape of the clearance better than a paragraph of description would. An ordinary house, no white goods left standing in the kitchen, nothing that needed to travel separately. Those are the quiet ones. They are also the ones people worry about most beforehand, because from two hours away you cannot see whether it is one load or three, and nobody wants to be the executor who guessed wrong.
Empty houses bring their own small complications. On one clearance we did, a neighbour let himself through the gate halfway through the morning to see what was going on. The team stopped him and asked him to wait outside, which is what we do at any unoccupied property. We do not know who has a right to be there and who has not, and the keys are our responsibility until we hand them back. The client wrote afterwards: "well done to the team for turning the 'nosey' neighbour away - I know EXACTLY who he is". Nine times in ten it is a well-meaning person from two doors down. The tenth time it is not, and we are not going to find out the hard way in somebody else's front room.
What comes out of a Trowbridge house clearance, and where it ends up
Nothing goes straight into a hole in the ground if we can help it. Furniture that somebody else would happily use, books, crockery, tools, garden bits — we ring round the reuse projects and charity warehouses first and see who has the room and the transport. What is genuinely finished is weighed in at a permitted transfer station and comes back to us as paperwork. If you want the transfer notes for the estate file, ask and we will forward them. They sometimes take a week or so to reach us. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679; trade loads go to a permitted transfer station, not to the council's household recycling centres.
Some things are their own separate problem. Domestic upholstered seating — sofas, armchairs, dining chairs with padded seats — is treated as containing POPs whatever its age, so it has to be kept separate and incinerated rather than tipped in with the general load. Fridges and freezers go to a degassing plant. Half-used tins of paint, thinners, aerosols and camping gas cylinders cannot ride in an ordinary van load at all; tell us before the day and we will price them properly rather than leave them on the doorstep for you.
A three-bed semi in Devizes, item by item
A June job over towards Devizes was the other kind of clearance entirely. A tidy, modest three-bed semi, where the family had spent weeks trying to place things with charities before they rang us. They were now up against a completion date at the end of the week. The person dealing with it lived north of Bristol, so a nine o'clock start was never going to work. We moved the arrival to ten and got there for ten.
What went on the van:
- one double bed and mattress;
- two single divans, mattresses and headboards with them;
- two-seater sofas and a matching easy chair;
- a tall narrow storage unit and a short shelf unit from the bedrooms;
- a three-drawer dresser, with two framed dressing mirrors to stand on it;
- a small drop-leaf kitchen table;
- an upright fridge freezer, plus the usual odds and ends from the backs of cupboards.
Carpets, curtains and light fittings stayed put for the buyer. One load, one day, invoice out the same week. Devizes is twenty minutes from Trowbridge on the A361 and we are through there most weeks, be it the town itself, Rowde, Potterne or the villages up towards Marlborough and Pewsey.
Probate house clearance in Trowbridge: executors and who pays
A good share of what we clear in Trowbridge is probate work, and executors are usually juggling a sale date they cannot move. We can invoice the executor, the solicitor handling the estate or the beneficiaries — whichever is simplest. On one probate matter the firm dealing with it told us plainly that they were still gathering information for the Grant application and would not be in funds for a couple of months, so the bill sat until the estate could meet it. That is normal. We are not going to chase a family for money the estate has not released yet.
On a probate house clearance you do not need to be there. If a key is with an agent, a neighbour or under an arrangement with the solicitor, we will collect it, clear the property and email you photographs of every room before and after. If there is something small and sentimental you want set aside — photographs, a box of letters, a wedding ring in a drawer — say so and the team will put it to one side and post it on to you. Cash, jewellery and paperwork get looked for as a matter of course in an empty house; drawers and pockets are checked, not tipped.
Access around Trowbridge
Trowbridge is not a hard town to work in, but it has its moments. The old weaving-town terraces off Frome Road and around the Town Bridge have no off-street parking to speak of, and a Luton van has to sit on the street while the team walk the load down. Newer estates towards Hilperton and Southwick are easier. The riverside flats and the converted mill buildings usually mean a shared car park with a height barrier. One flat clearance we did had a 2.4-metre barrier that a Luton simply cannot pass. The answer there was a tipper and a couple of extra runs. Because we knew about it a fortnight beforehand, nobody wasted a morning finding out the hard way. Tell us about barriers, bollards, permit bays and one-way streets when you book. It changes which van we send and how many hours we allow for.
The station on the Wessex Main Line is a five-minute walk from the market, with Westbury one stop south and Bradford-on-Avon one stop north, so if you are travelling in from Bath or Bristol to meet the team you can leave the car at home. We start at nine unless there is a reason not to.
Garage and loft clearance in Trowbridge, with the sheds and conservatories
A bungalow clearance we did last summer is a fair picture of what a full job looks like. Three bedrooms, all on one level, one of them used as a dining room. A lounge with a heavy dark display cabinet, a cottage-style three-piece suite, a coffee table and two small side cabinets. An attached conservatory full of bamboo furniture. A free-standing fridge freezer in the kitchen, with the oven, washing machine and integrated dishwasher staying for the buyer. Then a garage with a chest freezer humming away in the corner, and a shed at the bottom of the garden with a stack of plastic patio chairs. It was booked by a relative living down in West Sussex, sight unseen by us until the morning, and it went out in a day.
Lofts, garages and sheds are where a job grows, so mention them on the phone. So is a house that has quietly filled up over thirty years — those we handle the same as any other, no comment, no faces pulled, just more loads and sometimes a second day.
Booking a house clearance in Trowbridge, and where else we go
Pricing works off how much there is to shift, not how long the men are on site. A first load covers the van and the team for the day; further loads on the same day are charged at a lower rate, and there are separate charges for fridges, mattresses and POP items. You will get a figure over the phone or from photographs before anyone sets off, and nothing is payable up front — the invoice follows the job. If it is easier for the estate to pay part in advance, that is fine too.
House clearance Trowbridge work rarely stops at the town boundary. The same van covers Hilperton, Southwick, Staverton, Steeple Ashton, North Bradley and Yarnbrook, and we are regularly across at Melksham and Chippenham on the same week's diary. Larger jobs often come from further out — Bath is half an hour up the A363 and we work there constantly, as we do down at Salisbury and across the Wylye valley. If you are not sure we reach you, ring with the postcode and we will say yes or no on the spot. Ring us with the address, the number of bedrooms and what is in the loft, and we will tell you what a day would look like. The number is 0800 046 5555, and it has been the same firm on the other end of it since 2007.
Questions we get asked about house clearance in Trowbridge
Do I have to be at the property on the day? No. Plenty of the house clearance Trowbridge jobs we do are arranged by somebody two counties away — the Southwick clearance above was run from Hampshire. We will collect a key from an agent, a solicitor or a neighbour by arrangement, clear the house, lock up, and send photographs of every room before and after.
We are going through probate. Who do you invoice? Whoever the estate wants us to invoice: the executor personally, the solicitor acting for the estate, or the beneficiaries between them. Say so when you book and the paperwork will be made out that way from the start. If the Grant has not come through and the estate is not yet in funds, tell us — we have held invoices for months on that basis and it is not unusual.
How much notice do you need? A week or two is comfortable, and it gives us time to work around a completion date. Shorter than that is often still possible, particularly midweek. What genuinely slows a booking down is a surprise: a loft nobody mentioned, a locked garage, a barrier in the car park.
What happens to everything you take away? Usable furniture goes round the Wiltshire reuse projects and charity warehouses before anything else is decided about it. What is finished is weighed in at a permitted transfer station under our waste carrier registration, CBDU419679. Upholstery leaves as a POP item for incineration, and fridges and freezers go to a degassing plant.
Can you take paint tins, aerosols and gas cylinders? Not inside a normal van load, no — they have to be handled separately. Tell us before the day, ideally when you book, and they will be dealt with properly rather than left behind on the doorstep.
Do you clear lofts, garages, sheds and conservatories too? Yes, and they are exactly the places that turn a one-load job into a two-load one, so mention them on the phone. A house clearance in Trowbridge that looks like a morning from the front door can easily be a full day once the shed at the bottom of the garden is opened up.
