Most house clearance in Lewisham comes down to stairs. Converted Victorian houses cut into two and three flats, post-war blocks with no lift ever fitted, maisonettes sitting two storeys above a communal door. That is the housing stock here, and it decides how a day runs far more than the volume of furniture does. We have been clearing properties since 2007, and the two jobs below are a fair sample of what house clearance Lewisham side of the river actually involves.
Take a maisonette we emptied on a Friday in April, over at the Deptford end of the patch in SE16. Three bedrooms across two storeys inside a block, no outside areas at all and no loft, so everything that had to come out was in the rooms themselves — nothing hiding in a shed or over the rafters. Four flights of stairs and no lift. Twenty-four steps up from the entrance before you even reach the internal flight. The customer booked it on the Tuesday for that same Friday, which is quick, and was organising the whole thing from Devon while travelling up to be at the property on the day.
The scope on booking was all the rooms of furniture, three mattresses, the appliances, the curtains, and the flooring and carpets as well. He was shifting the personal bits and the few pieces he wanted to keep himself, so what we were left with was, in his own description, "very little clutter.. just furniture and appliances in the main". Then the scope changed before the day, which happens more often than people expect on an end of tenancy job: "Council have confirmed carpets and flooring can stay put." So the carpets and the floor coverings stayed exactly where they were, and the team worked around them instead of lifting them — a fair chunk of weight that never went near the van.
The under-counter fridge and the under-counter freezer both came out. Those two can't just be tipped in with the rest: fridges and freezers have to be degassed by a permitted handler, so they travel separately and go to a WEEE route, not the residual stream. Three mattresses went as mattresses, tracked as their own stream. He had told us plainly at the booking stage what we were and weren't walking into — "Nothing hazardous to remove.. no Vermin." — and that one sentence is worth more to a crew than a page of description, because it tells the lads what kit to load.
Parking was restricted, as it is across most of this borough, but he held a visitor permit and the van stood at the bottom of the stairs to the flats, which is as close as that block allows. The other line in the correspondence that stuck with us, written when the world was still being careful about it: "No Covid. If that changes I'll tell you." Straightforward, no fuss, and precisely the sort of thing we would rather be told than not.
Where things end up
Furniture, crockery, tools, garden pots, books, unopened stock from a spare room — if it can go back into use, we'd rather it did. Lewisham has no shortage of charity shops, community projects and reuse schemes along Rushey Green and around the shopping centre, and usable goods go that way first. Metals come off separately. Electricals go to a WEEE handler.
Fridges and freezers need degassing before anything else can happen to them. Upholstery caught by the POP rules. That's a sofa or padded chair containing persistent organic pollutants, which since 2023 has to be kept out of the general load and sent down its own controlled route. Is booked in as such and never quietly mixed. What genuinely can't be reused or recycled goes into the residual stream at a permitted transfer station, and we keep the transfer note for every single load. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679. It's worth asking that of anyone who quotes you, because a cheap van man who fly-tips your sofa on Sydenham Hill leaves the fine with the person whose name is on the paperwork — you.
The council's own reuse and recycling centre at Landmann Way, over by Deptford, takes household bits from residents, but it won't accept a trade vehicle full of a whole flat. A bulky-waste booking with the council caps out at a handful of items. That's the gap we fill, and it's why most flat clearance work in the borough ends up with a firm rather than a hire van.
Getting a van to the door
Lewisham is not flat and it is not roomy. Honor Oak and the climb up towards Forest Hill are steep enough that a Luton parked badly is a genuine problem. The terraced roads off Brockley Rise and Ladywell Road are permit-only with barely a gap between bumpers. Tell us as early as you can — the council needs a good couple of weeks' notice for a suspension, and the team can't invent a bay on the morning. Where a suspension isn't possible we work off the nearest legal spot and barrow it. Slower, and we'd rather say so at the start than surprise you with it at four o'clock.
Converted flats are the other Lewisham speciality. First and second floors, no lift, a dog-leg staircase with a tight turn at the half-landing, and a three-seater that clearly went in before the banister did. Sometimes it comes apart on the landing. Sometimes it goes out through a window on a rope. Either way the team has done it before in this borough and won't stand there scratching their heads. Out towards the SE12 and SE9 semis it flips the other way round: easy parking, easy door, and then a garage and loft that nobody has opened since the nineteen-eighties. On those, garage and loft clearance is where the actual volume turns out to be.
The areas we cover from here
SE13 for Lewisham itself and Ladywell, SE4 for Brockley and Crofton Park, SE6 across Catford and Bellingham, SE23 for Forest Hill and Honor Oak Park, SE26 up through Sydenham, SE12 towards Lee and Grove Park, plus SE8 in Deptford and SE14 around New Cross. SE3 for Blackheath, SE9 for Eltham and Mottingham, SE10 down by the river, SE15 in Peckham and Nunhead, SE16 across Rotherhithe and the Bermondsey side. BR1 and BR3 where the borough runs out into the Bromley postal districts. Hither Green likewise. The heart of it is Lewisham Council territory; the edges run into Greenwich, Southwark and Bromley, and we cross those boundaries without making a fuss about it. Lewisham station, with the DLR terminus and the trains down from London Bridge, is our usual landmark for directing a team, and Forest Hill and Brockley on the Overground do the same job at the western edge.
Neighbouring pages carry their own work and their own postcodes: house clearance in Bromley, house clearance in Beckenham for BR3, and house clearance in Greenwich for SE10 and the Blackheath side of SE3. A job that sits on a boundary street gets done by whichever crew is nearest — it makes no difference to you which page you rang from.
What the price is built from
We don't publish figures here, and we won't guess at one from a page. Every property is a different size with different things in it, and the honest answer is that we need to know what we're looking at first. Ring 0800 046 5555 with the postcode district, the size of the property, which floor it's on and whether a van can stop outside, or send photographs of each room through the form on this page. The quote is free, it doesn't commit you to anything, and nobody turns up to lean on you at the door with a different story. Certain items — mattresses, fridges and freezers, televisions and monitors, POP upholstery, gas bottles, paint and solvents. Are handled and documented separately because the regulations require it, so tell us if any of those are in the property and we will arrange the right route for them.
Probate, landlords and people who live somewhere else
A fair proportion of the Lewisham work is instructed by someone who isn't in London at all — an executor two counties away, a landlord abroad, a managing agent working from a system with a reference number on it. The SE16 maisonette above was run from Devon. That is normal, and it changes nothing except the logistics: we can collect keys from a neighbour or an agent, photograph every room before and after, and put items of obvious sentimental value aside rather than skipping them. On one probate house clearance the instruction was simply to keep back any photograph albums the team came across, and they did.
On the money side of probate work we are plain about it. We invoice the solicitor, the executor or the administrator directly, and it can be settled from the estate account rather than out of anyone's own pocket. There is no deposit — the invoice follows the work, not the other way round. Managing agents get theirs addressed to the company. Neither arrangement costs anything extra, and if you want a copy of the waste transfer note attached to the invoice, ask and it goes out with it. More about how we handle probate house clearance generally is on its own page; the Lewisham part is just us knowing the stairs.
Overfilled and difficult properties
Some places haven't been emptied in thirty years. Bags in the hallway, a kitchen you can't reach the back of, a fridge that stopped working long enough ago that the contents have their own opinion. We handle those, and the crew doesn't comment on them — not in the property, not afterwards.
One in SE14, New Cross, came to us through a relocation firm handling the estate, and it was flagged as verminous from the very start rather than discovered on the day. That honesty is why it ran properly. It was raised in the June, and the note back to the personal representative dealing with the estate read: "The PR is aware the earliest availability is now 21st-23rd July." It ran on the 21st.
One load out, a mattress, a POP item and a television set among it, all weighed in and documented as regulated disposal. There was also a wasp nest in the way, so a treatment was booked alongside the clearance instead of the team arriving to find it. And the occupier wasn't going to be there — "The occupier has not requested to be present when works are carried out." — which meant keys, access and the parking arrangement all had to be settled before anyone set off, because there would be nobody on site to sort it out at half past eight.
If a property is genuinely verminous, or if it is a hoarded house clearance that will need more than a day, say so when you book. The team brings different kit, we block out the right number of days, and nothing has to be renegotiated on the doorstep. If it's only a few bulky items rather than a whole property, that's rubbish removal and it's a smaller job — say that too.
Common questions
Can you invoice a solicitor for a probate house clearance in Lewisham?
Yes. We invoice the solicitor, executor or administrator directly, and payment can come from the estate account. No deposit is taken and the invoice follows the work.
What does a house clearance in Lewisham cost?
We don't quote from a page. Ring 0800 046 5555 or send photographs of each room through the form on this page, tell us the floor and the parking, and you'll get a free quote with no obligation attached.
Can you do a flat clearance with no lift and nowhere to park?
Yes, and it's most of what we do here. Flat clearance in the converted houses across SE4, SE13 and SE23 usually means carrying down a staircase to the nearest legal stopping point. Tell us the floor and the door situation when you book so the right crew and the right day get allocated.
Do you clear garages and lofts as well as the house?
We do. Garage and loft clearance in Lewisham is often where most of the volume actually sits, particularly in the SE9 and SE12 semis, so mention them when you ring rather than on the morning.
What won't you take?
Gas bottles, paint and solvents, asbestos sheeting off an old garage roof and similar hazardous material can't go on a general load. Tell us what's there and we'll arrange the right disposal route. Don't tell us, and the team will leave it standing in the hall.
How much notice do you need for a parking suspension?
A good couple of weeks for the council to process one. Where that isn't possible we work off the nearest legal spot instead, and we'll tell you that before the day.
Booking
Ring 0800 046 5555 or use the form on this page with the postcode district, the size of the property, which floor it's on and whether a van can stop outside. Loft, garage, shed, garden — mention those too, they're where the volume hides. We'll tell you what we can do and when, and if there's something in there we're not permitted to carry, we'll say so before the day rather than on it.
