Three loads, two days, and a clean at the end of it. That was the August 2024 house clearance on a small residential park just outside Wadebridge, PL27. A whole property to empty for an estate, with a legal firm up country handling the paperwork and a relative doing the running about at the Cornish end. We gave an honest estimate before we started: three loads and two days, with the caveat we always give, that nothing is fully knowable until the wardrobes are open and the loft hatch comes down. It held. The team worked through both days, the property went out clean, and we sent the completed photographs across the same evening so the person paying. Who lived nowhere near Wadebridge — could see the empty rooms for himself.
The paperwork was the fiddliest part. He had no card reader for his online banking and no email address for the legal firm to hand, so it took a few days of back and forth to get the invoice in front of the right people. Nobody minded. We do not ask for anything up front, and a probate clearance is not a job you rush the billing on.
Where the vans go around here
Wadebridge sits where the Camel stops being a river you can cross easily, so most of what we do in this corner of Cornwall spreads out from the A39. PL27 is the home patch — the town itself, Egloshayle, St Breock, St Issey, St Minver and the lanes toward Rock. From there it is Padstow in PL28, Port Isaac in PL29, Bodmin and the moor villages in PL30 and PL31, Camelford in PL32, Delabole in PL33, Tintagel in PL34 and Boscastle in PL35. North along the coast we reach Bude in EX23. West and south the postcodes turn to TR. Newquay, St Columb, St Agnes, Perranporth and down as far as Truro, with St Austell, Fowey, Lostwithiel and Par on the other flank, and Launceston, Callington, Liskeard, Looe, Saltash and Torpoint out towards the Tamar. All of it falls under Cornwall Council, one authority for the whole county, which at least means one set of rules rather than six.
Several of those towns have their own page, and it is worth reading them if your property sits between the two of us. For anything the moor side of the A39 there is house clearance in Bodmin, the bigger town on this side of the county. For the smaller places out towards the Tamar there is house clearance in Launceston. And if you are honestly not sure which of them your address belongs to, start with house clearance across Cornwall and we will work it out on the phone.
Wadebridge has not had a railway station since the old line shut — the trackbed is the Camel Trail now, and half the people we meet in town have walked or cycled a stretch of it that week. The nearest mainline stop is Bodmin Parkway, about twenty minutes away on the A389 and A38, with the branch from Par to Newquay if you are coming from the other direction. It matters for one practical reason: relatives who live away often ask whether they need to be here.
Usually not. We have met people off the train at Bodmin Parkway, we have collected keys from agents. We have had keys posted to us by special delivery and posted them back the same way afterwards, which is what one family in Devon asked us to do when the drive down was five hours each way. If you want meter readings taken while we are in the house, ask.
The team will write them down before they leave and email them to you with the photographs.
The kinds of house clearance we do in Wadebridge
Probate house clearance in Wadebridge
Most of what we do in PL27 is probate work. A parent's house, the grant through at last, the property wanted on the market before the season starts. Probate house clearance in Wadebridge nearly always involves someone who lives a long way off, which is why we photograph every room when it is empty and send the lot the same evening. We invoice the solicitor, the trustee or the executor directly if that is how you want it done, and payment can come out of the estate. Nothing is payable before the work.
End of tenancy clearance in Wadebridge
Landlords, agents and the odd holiday-let owner ring us for end of tenancy clearance when a property has been left with more in it than the deposit will ever cover. Beds, sofas, a fridge nobody defrosted, a shed of garden furniture. Around Wadebridge that work bunches up in the autumn, once the season is over and the changeovers stop.
Flat clearance in PL27
There are more flats in the middle of town than people expect — above the shops, in the converted places off the main street, and in the small sheltered schemes on the edge of Wadebridge. A flat clearance is usually less about volume than about the carry: first or second floor, no lift, a stair that turns tight at the top, and a van that has to sit further away than anyone would like. We would rather know all that before the day than discover it at eight in the morning.
Garage and loft clearance in Wadebridge
Sometimes the house itself is fine and it is everything else that has stacked up. Garage and loft clearance is a job in its own right down here. The garage that has not had a car in it since the nineties, the loft that was filled by somebody who is no longer able to get up there, the boat bits, the fishing gear, the seized mower. We can do those on their own, without touching the rest of the house.
A clearance instructed by a managing agent
Not every clearance comes from a family. One of ours was instructed by a block and estate management team — the people a freeholder pays to look after a residential block — and the work itself was ordinary enough. It was the paperwork that had a shape of its own, and it is worth setting out, because agents ask us about it more than anything else.
There was nobody to hand an invoice to at the end of the day. It went to the agent's invoicing desk instead, and the reply that came back told us exactly what would happen to it: "We will now begin to process your payment and it will be passed to the relevant Property Manager for approval and you should expect to receive payment within the next 28 days or sooner where possible."
Later, when we followed it up, we were pointed at a different desk again — "Going forward could you please make sure that any arrears chasing email are sent to this email address as they are dealing with this and your query will be looked into and responded to quicker?" — while invoices themselves carried on going to the first one. None of that is a complaint. It is simply how a managed block runs, and if you are an agent reading this it is the useful bit. We are used to approval chains, we do not go round you to the leaseholder, and we will send the invoice to whichever address your system wants it at. We do a good job and we do not let a customer down. The admin is our problem, not yours.
What actually leaves the house, and where it goes
We are a licensed waste carrier, registration CBDU419679, and we carry insurance for the work and for the property while we are in it. Every load off a Cornish job is weighed and ticketed at a permitted transfer station, and we keep the tickets. Furniture, clothing, books and household bits that somebody else could still use are offered to charity shops and reuse projects in the area first. Cornwall has plenty of them, and a decent three-piece suite does more good standing in a shop in Bodmin than crushed in the back of a lorry. Metal, wood, cardboard and electricals are separated out at the depot. What is genuinely finished is the only part that ends up as waste.
Two rules catch people out if nobody warns them. Sofas, armchairs and padded dining chairs fall under the persistent organic pollutant rules, which means the foam has to be handled and destroyed on its own route with its own paperwork. Each of those items travels separately from everything else on the van. Fridges and freezers are the same story for gas recovery. Then there is the short list of things a house-clearance lorry simply may not carry: half-used paint tins, propane and butane cylinders, engine oil, solvents, asbestos sheeting from the old garage roof. Tell us on the phone if any of that is in the shed and we will tell you who does take it. Cornwall Council's household waste sites will take small quantities of some of it from a resident's car.
Pricing, and what makes a day longer
The honest answer is that nobody can tell you anything useful about a house clearance in Wadebridge without seeing it, or at least seeing photographs of it. When you ring, we would rather ask you eight dull questions. How many bedrooms, is the loft full, is there a garage, is there a shed, is anything staying, is there power and water. And give you an estimate you can rely on than send someone out to talk you into something on your own doorstep. The estimate is free and it does not commit you to anything. Ring 0800 046 5555, or send the photographs through the form on this page and we will come back to you.
Down here the things that stretch a day tend to be geography. Parking is the big one: the older terraces in the middle of Wadebridge give you nowhere close, and a long carry from the van adds real hours. Some of the coastal properties round Port Isaac and Polzeath sit at the bottom of a lane no lorry can turn in. The tips and the charity depots have their own queues, particularly in summer when the roads are full. We would rather you knew all that in advance than heard it as an excuse at four o'clock.
Full houses do not put us off. Places where forty years of belongings have quietly filled every room, where the back bedroom has not been opened in a decade, where the garage door will not move because of what is stacked behind it. That is ordinary work for us, and the team has seen far more than whatever is in your relative's house. Small valuables that turn up while we are working get set aside and handed to whoever is there. If nobody is there, they go in a box on the kitchen worktop and we photograph it.
We have been clearing houses across the South West since 2007, for executors, for families sorting out a parent's house from two hundred miles away, for landlords between tenancies and for people who simply want the spare room back.
Common questions about house clearance in Wadebridge
Can you invoice the solicitor instead of me? Yes. On probate work we invoice the solicitor, the trustee or the executor direct, and it can be settled out of the estate rather than out of your own pocket. Nothing is payable in advance; the invoice follows the work. We do the same for managing agents and their invoicing desks.
Do I have to be at the property on the day? No, and most people are not. We collect keys from agents or neighbours, we have met relatives off the train at Bodmin Parkway, and we take keys by post and send them back the same way. You get photographs of every empty room the same evening.
Does a house clearance include a clean? A standard clean is included, and it is worth knowing exactly what it covers so there are no surprises at the viewing: floors, surfaces, glass and skirtings. It does not cover the insides of ovens, fridges, drawers and cupboards. If you need those doing, say so when you ring and we will arrange it rather than leave you to find out afterwards.
What will you not take away? Paint and solvents, propane and butane cylinders, engine oil, and anything with asbestos in it — old garage roofs mostly. None of that is allowed on a house-clearance van. Tell us what is in the shed on the phone and we will tell you where it can go.
Do you cover the villages as well as the town? Yes. PL27 means Egloshayle, St Breock, St Issey, St Minver and the lanes down to Rock as much as it means Wadebridge itself, and we are out to Padstow, Port Isaac, Bodmin and Camelford most weeks.
Something has been left behind that was meant to stay. What then? If items are to stay in the property, tell us before the day and put it in writing if you can — a picture on the wall, a wall-mounted television, a box of keys nobody has claimed. The team works to that list, and anything they are unsure about stays where it is until somebody confirms.
If you have a property in Wadebridge, Padstow, Bodmin, Camelford, Tintagel or anywhere across PL27 and its neighbours that needs emptying, ring 0800 046 5555 with the rough size of it and a few photographs on your phone. We will tell you the loads and the days and what it will take, and if we cannot help we will say so.
