A lockup on a business park off the Darlington road, roughly three hundred cubic feet of it, filled front to back with general furniture, household oddments and one washing machine sat square in the middle. The lady who booked it had a day off owing and used it on us. Before anything else she wanted the access sorted, and she sorted it herself: "No there are no parking restrictions, I will ensure gates are open for van to park on premises." The unit was round the back of the building, behind gates that stay shut most of the week. That one sentence saved us an hour of hunting for someone with a key.
It nearly did not happen on the day it was meant to. We had it in the diary for a Friday in May, then one of the lads went down ill and we had to ring and move it. She checked her rota, found the Tuesday free instead, and wrote back to say that would work out. The team met her at nine, unit emptied, washing machine out through the roller door and away. Storage units are a category of their own. Nobody fills a lockup with things they use, so what comes out is usually the tail end of a house move or a business that wound up, and the sorting takes longer than the carrying.
The older terraces on the north side
The other Northallerton job that sticks in mind was a full house down in DL7, a Saturday, one load, house clearance team plus the regulated disposal. Weekend work is arranged differently from a weekday and we say so before anyone books, because turning a crew out on a Saturday takes more organising and we would rather be blunt on the phone than clever afterwards. That one was arranged by a relative living down in Nottinghamshire who never saw the property while we were in it. Photographs of the emptied rooms went over to him the same evening.
That is more common up here than people think. Northallerton is a town people leave for work and come back to for funerals. Half our instructions in DL6 and DL7 come from someone three or four counties away holding a set of keys they have had posted to them.
Getting a Luton van into the middle of town
The High Street is wide — genuinely wide, the old droving road, which is a gift on market days and a nuisance on every other one because it fills with parked cars end to end. Wednesday and Saturday the stalls are up and the middle of the street is gone. We plan round it. If your property is on or just off the High Street, tell us which market day falls in that week and we will pick a different one, or we will start early and be loaded before the traders finish setting out.
Behind the frontages there are yards and ginnels running back off the street, some of them barely wide enough for a wheelbarrow, never mind a three-and-a-half tonne van. Romanby and Brompton are easier — post-war semis, driveways, garages you can actually reverse to. Out at Osmotherley and the villages under the moor edge it is stone cottages with a step straight onto the lane, and there we work with a smaller vehicle and shuttle.
Northallerton station sits on the East Coast Main Line, which matters to us for one practical reason. Executors coming up from London can be here in under three hours and back the same evening, so we can nearly always arrange to meet someone on site rather than doing everything by photograph. If nobody can travel, a keysafe or a set of keys left with a neighbour works perfectly well, and we photograph every room before and after.
Sorting, reuse and the transfer station
Furniture in decent order, crockery, books, tools, garden gear. We would rather see that go back into use than into a skip, so the sound items are offered to charity shops and reuse schemes on this side of the county before anything else happens to them. What nobody will take is loaded, weighed in and processed through a permitted transfer station, and we keep the paperwork for it. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679 and we will send you the transfer note along with the invoice if you want it for the estate file.
There are things we cannot simply throw in with the rest. Tins of paint, aerosols, gas bottles and garden chemicals sit outside what a general load is allowed to contain, and they need routing separately. Tell us on the phone how many and we will deal with them properly rather than leaving them stood in the empty hall. Sofas, armchairs and other upholstered seating are treated as a separate stream too, because of the flame-retardant chemistry in the foam and covers. The regulations changed and upholstery now has to be kept apart from the general load and processed on its own.
What is actually involved on the day, carpets and all
The second clearance worth setting out here was not booked in a rush, and that is the useful part of it. The enquiry came in with no date attached at all, just a property that needed emptying and a question about how soon we could be there. We need very little notice. A working day or two is normally enough. But if someone has a particular day in mind we will hold it for them then and there, so they get the day they want rather than the day that is left. No payment goes anywhere before the work: the invoice follows the job, and that is the order it happens in every time.
The crew arrive at the property at nine in the morning and the ordinary expectation is that the whole place is cleared that same day. Where a property turns out to be cluttered, or partly cluttered, we do not stop and rebook — we carry on and run extra loads until it is done. Only if the volume genuinely runs past what the day allows do we come back on a second day, and we say so at the time rather than after.
The thing that surprised this particular customer, and surprises most people, is how little preparation is wanted from them. Nothing needs boxing or bagging. Take out what you want to keep, or put it to one side in a room, and the team clear everything else — inside cupboards, inside wardrobes, out of drawers, the lot. They take up carpets, underlay and gripper rods as well. The gripper rods carry one honest caveat, and it was written out to the customer plainly in the reply: "gripper rods where possible, if the rods have been put down over the top of tiles or other floor surfaces other than floor boards we will not remove as they can cause damage to the tiles or flooring underneath". A rod pinned into floorboards lifts cleanly. A rod glued or pinned over ceramic tiles takes the tile with it, and no one wants that photograph in their estate file. Then the property gets swept right through.
Everything off that job went the same route as everything else: licensed recycling stations, with anything suitable offered to charity first, and a waste transfer note available on request.
Garage and loft clearance in Northallerton, and the half-and-half jobs
Garage and loft clearance is its own animal and worth booking as a named job rather than an afterthought. The Romanby and Brompton semis nearly all have a garage that has not held a car since about 1994, and the older houses off the High Street have lofts reached by a hatch and a stick. What comes out of a garage and loft in this town is fairly consistent: paint, bicycle frames, camping gear, boxes of paperwork gone damp, a lawnmower nobody can start. The loft matters for pricing sanity too — the one thing that changes a day is a loft nobody had opened, or a garage crammed behind a door that would not swing.
Then there are the half-and-half clearances, which we do more of than you would guess. The buyers want some of the contents left in place — furniture and fittings staying with the sale — and the rest gone: beds, bookcases, a sideboard, a wardrobe. When nobody is local to the property, the sale particulars and the fittings-and-contents form do the job that photographs would otherwise do. Ideally someone comes on the day and stands in the middle of the room pointing at things. That is the right way to do a half-and-half clearance. Get it wrong and you have taken something the buyer had already paid for.
The patch: DL6, DL7 and the way out to the edges
Northallerton and Romanby cover DL6 and DL7 between them; Thirsk and the villages south of here fall into YO7. Bedale, Leeming Bar, Great Smeaton, Brompton, Ainderby Steeple, Osmotherley and Ingleby Cross — all inside the old Hambleton district, all now under North Yorkshire Council, and all a straightforward run for us. We are out this way most weeks, and the villages under the moor edge get the same attention as the town does.
Beyond our own districts, we cover the neighbouring towns as well, and each has its own page. house clearance in Malton for the market town over towards the Wolds, house clearance in Newton Aycliffe north of us over the county line, house clearance in Darlington up the A167. house clearance in Richmond west towards the dale. A house clearance in Northallerton and one in any of those is the same crew and the same licence. If your property sits between two of those, ring and we will tell you which crew day it lands on.
Probate house clearance and executors at a distance
A great deal of the house clearance Northallerton sends our way is probate work. Probate clearances have their own rhythm: the will has to be through, the valuation done, the beneficiaries agreed on what is being kept, and only then does the property get emptied. We are used to waiting for that and used to moving quickly once it lands. For the detail of how we handle probate work generally, there is a separate probate house clearance page.
We can invoice the executors, the solicitor handling probate, or the administrator of the estate directly, and the cost can be settled from the estate. Nothing is asked for up front. The quote is free and puts you under no obligation — send photographs through the form on this page, or ring 0800 046 5555 and describe the property.
Houses that have got badly out of hand are not a problem and not a conversation. Hoarder house clearance is something we have done for years; we have been into properties where the floor had not been seen in years. Nobody comments, nobody photographs anything but the walls, and the job gets done the same as any other. If there is anything in there that could be a health risk, say so beforehand so the team come equipped. There is a hoarder house clearance page with more on how those days run.
For the smaller jobs — a single room, a garage on its own, a van load of rubbish left after a builder — house rubbish removal is the page you want rather than a full clearance booking.
Frequently asked questions about house clearance in Northallerton
How much notice do you need for a house clearance in Northallerton? Usually one to two working days. If you have a particular date in mind, tell us when you ring and we will book it in then, so you get the day you want rather than whatever is left. We start at nine in the morning.
Do I need to pack anything up before you arrive? No. Take out what you want to keep, or set it aside in one room, and the team clear everything else — cupboards, wardrobes, drawers, carpets, underlay and gripper rods where they lift safely.
Can you invoice the solicitor handling the estate? Yes. We invoice executors, solicitors or estate administrators directly, and the cost can be paid from the estate. There is no payment before the work.
What happens to everything you take away? Anything sound is offered to charity shops and reuse schemes first. The rest goes to licensed recycling and transfer stations. Our waste carrier registration is CBDU419679 and we will send you the transfer note if you want it for the file.
Do you cover the villages as well as the town? Yes. Romanby, Brompton, Ainderby Steeple, Great Smeaton, Osmotherley, Bedale and Leeming Bar are all a normal run for us, and Thirsk and the villages south of here in YO7 as well.
Is the quote free? Yes, and it carries no obligation. Ring 0800 046 5555 with the postcode, the number of bedrooms and roughly what is left in there, or send a few photographs through the form on this page. We have been doing house clearance since 2007 and we will tell you straight what the job involves.
