We have been doing house clearance in King's Lynn and the villages around it since 2007. Most of it is probate work on houses that were lived in for forty years by the same people. Most days go the way they should. This page opens with one that did not, because that is the one worth telling.
September 2019. The job was instructed by a managing agent rather than by a family, two loads went out on the same day with a mattress on the second. The crew closed the door and left. The agent visited on the Tuesday afterwards and wrote to the office the same day: "The fridge had been moved from the kitchen and left, full of food, in the garden." The food in it had gone over, the flies and the rats had found it, and while the agent was in the property the neighbours were knocking on the door to complain about the state of the place. The kitchen had been left with food residue and grease across it. The instruction that came back was plain enough — "Please can you arrange to have the fridge removed and the kitchen cleaned to remove any food residue which is causing the flies." We went back, took the fridge away properly as the hazardous item it is, and cleaned the kitchen down.
That one is the reason a fridge or a freezer never gets carried out and parked on a lawn on our jobs now, emptied or not. The reason the team leader walks the kitchen last with the customer or the agent on the phone before the van pulls off. A cold appliance has gas in it, it has to go on its own route. Standing it outside a property while the crew finishes is how a clearance turns into a complaint from an entire street.
Houses on this patch carry the usual weight of a place lived in for decades. A teak sideboard, heavy enough to need both ends carried. A corner unit built around a television set that stopped existing in about 1998, the shelf still cut to the shape of the back of it. A bar unit with a padded front, which is exactly the sort of thing that now has to travel separately. Crates of empty jars in the garage, kept for jam that was never going to be made. A home brew kit with the bucket still stained. None of that is remarkable. It is just what comes out of a normal house when somebody finally has to empty it, and it is why "a few bits" on the phone turns into two loads on the day more often than not.
The tip run, and what avoids it
Everything that leaves a property on this patch goes one of two ways. Furniture that is sound, appliances that still run, tools, china, books. We offer those on before anything gets tipped, and the reuse projects and charity outlets around Lynn and Downham Market will take furniture readily enough if it is clean and the fire labels are still stitched on. The rest is weighed in at a permitted transfer station and a docket is raised against it; ask and we will send the paperwork through. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679. Fridges and freezers are handled as hazardous because of the gas in them, so they are booked and taken on their own route rather than swallowed into the load. And, as above, they do not sit in a garden waiting for it.
Upholstery is the one that surprises people. Sofas, armchairs, padded headboards, that sort of bar unit with the vinyl front. Treated foam has to be destroyed on its own permitted route now, kept clear of everything else in the load. It is a legal requirement and there is nothing we can do about it. Paint tins, gas bottles, thinners, old chemicals from the shed: those want a proper hazardous route too. They cannot ride in the back of a tipper alongside a wardrobe. Tell us on the phone what is in the shed and we will sort it out before the day rather than leaving it on the drive.
Probate house clearance in King's Lynn, and the solicitor's file
Probate work makes up a lot of what we do across King's Lynn and West Norfolk. Executors are frequently nowhere near the property, and a good share of our Norfolk work comes from someone in another county holding a set of keys they never wanted.
The paperwork side is straightforward and worth saying plainly, because people ring the office unsure whether they are personally on the hook for it. On probate house clearance we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate direct. Whichever of them is handling the file — and the work can be paid for out of the estate rather than out of anybody's own pocket. There is no deposit. The invoice follows the work, and if the solicitor needs it addressed to the estate in a particular form, that is a phone call, not a problem. The quotation itself is free and puts you under no obligation.
We can take the keys from a neighbour or an agent, clear the house. Email photographs of every room once it is empty so the person paying can see what they have paid for. If there are papers, photographs or small things of sentimental value, say so before the day and the team will set them aside rather than have them go out with the carpets. Where a property is being sold and the probate is still crawling along, we will work to the dates the solicitor gives us. Probate does not run to anybody's convenience, and there is no sense pretending otherwise.
Garage and loft clearance in the King's Lynn villages
Village houses out on the fen edge and up the coast road do a particular thing to a day. Garage and loft clearance in King's Lynn is rarely the tidy job people picture: there is no loft ladder. The first half hour goes on getting a set of steps up onto a landing that was not built for them; there is a garage that has not been opened properly since the last owner but one; and there is always a garden. Seed trays stacked ten deep. Terracotta pots with most of them cracked through by frost. Hanging baskets with the liners gone to mulch. Half a ton of it is not house clearance at all in the customer's head, and all of it still has to go somewhere.
Lofts in the older PE31 and PE32 cottages are boarded in patches and not at all elsewhere. Is why two of us go up rather than one. Garages out that way are often full of somebody's trade. Tins, timber offcuts, a bench with a vice bolted to it — and the tins are the part that needs sorting before the day, not on it. Where things are being left behind on purpose, we photograph what stays and send it over with the paperwork. On a big garage and loft clearance it is worth both sides being clear about what went and what did not.
Getting a van to the door
Lynn is not a hard town to work in, but it has its spots. The old streets down towards the Custom House and the two Market Places are tight and half of them are loading-restricted. If the property is down there we would rather know in advance and time the load properly than block a lane at eleven on a Tuesday. Gaywood and Fairstead are straightforward — driveways, room to turn. South Wootton and North Wootton the same. West Lynn means going round by the bridge with a loaded tipper rather than the ferry, obviously. Flats above shops on the High Street are a stair job and we treat them as one. Two men carrying a three-piece suite down a narrow staircase is slower than the same suite going out of a bungalow door in Dersingham.
King's Lynn station sits at the end of the Fen Line, with trains down through Watlington, Downham Market, Littleport and Ely to Cambridge and King's Cross. That line is why so much of this work is instructed from London. Somebody comes up for the day, meets the team at nine, walks the house. Gets the train back that evening with the keys handed to the agent.
The postcodes we cover from here
This page covers PE30, PE31, PE32, PE33, PE34, PE35 and PE36. So King's Lynn itself, Sandringham and the estate villages, Dersingham, Snettisham and Heacham up to Hunstanton, out to Terrington St Clement and Clenchwarton on the marsh side, and the villages inland towards East Winch and Litcham. South of that we cover PE38 for Downham Market and PE33, and PE14 through Emneth, Outwell and Upwell. Over the county line we work PE13 around Wisbech and CB6 around Ely and Haddenham. North and east: NR21 for Fakenham, NR22 and NR23 for Walsingham and Wells-next-the-Sea. And to the south east, IP26 and IP27 around Methwold and Brandon.
Some of the bigger towns round the Wash have their own pages, and if your property is nearer one of those than it is to Lynn, start there: house clearance in Wisbech over the Cambridgeshire border, house clearance in Spalding and house clearance in Boston across on the Lincolnshire side, and house clearance in Skegness up the coast. Same crews, same registration, same way of working.
What it costs, and what we will not pretend
We do not print figures on this page, and we are not going to guess at yours in print either. Ring the office with the postcode and a rough idea of the property. Room sizes, whether the loft and the garage are full, whether there are fridges, mattresses or upholstered furniture in it — or send photographs through the form on this page, and you will get a figure back and a date. The quote is free and there is no obligation attached to it. On estate work, see the probate section above for who we invoice.
Hoarder house clearance we do without comment and without a fuss. Full rooms, blocked hallways, thirty years of paper, floors you cannot see: it is a bigger job, it wants more loads and more days. That is the whole of it. Nobody gets a lecture from our crews, and nothing is photographed for anybody except the person who is paying for the work.
Common questions about house clearance in King's Lynn
Can you invoice the solicitor or the executor rather than me? Yes. On probate house clearance in King's Lynn we invoice the solicitor, the executor or the estate directly. The work can be paid out of the estate. There is no deposit, and the invoice follows the work.
Do I have to be at the property? No. If the keys are with a neighbour or an agent in PE30 we can collect them, do the clearance, lock up and email photographs of every empty room the same day.
Which areas do you cover from King's Lynn? PE30, PE31, PE32, PE33 and PE34 are the core. The town, Gaywood, Fairstead, the Woottons, West Lynn, out to Terrington St Clement and Clenchwarton, up through Dersingham and Snettisham, and inland through East Winch and Litcham.
Will you take a fridge, a freezer or a mattress? Yes, but they are booked in as separate items rather than thrown on the load. Cold appliances hold gas and go on a hazardous route, and mattresses and upholstered furniture fall under the POP rules and have to be destroyed separately.
Can you clear just the garage and the loft? Yes. Garage and loft clearance on its own is a normal booking here, and so is a single item. A piano, a suite, one wardrobe on a landing.
How do I get a quotation? Ring 0800 046 5555 with the postcode, or send photographs of each room through the form on this page. If the house is empty and the keys are with a neighbour in PE30, we can do the whole house clearance without you being there at all. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679 and we have been clearing houses since 2007.
