House clearance in Evesham is most of what we do in this corner of Worcestershire, and most of it reaches us through executors rather than through people moving house. Below are two real Evesham jobs, and then the plain detail — where we go, how a day runs, what cannot go in the van and why. We have been doing this work since 2007.
Nine in the morning, a Tuesday in October, and the executor was already stood on the drive with a flask. He had driven down the night before and taken a room half an hour away so he wouldn't be late. His brother came too. Between them they had emptied most of the small stuff into boxes already, but the kitchen had beaten them — every cupboard still packed, right to the back, the way kitchens are in a house somebody lived in for decades. They asked whether they could carry boxes out alongside the team. Of course they could. Plenty of families want to, and it does no harm at all, as long as nobody is on the stairs at the same moment as a wardrobe.
The question that morning was one load or two. Our estimator thought it would squeeze into one. The team leader reckoned two. We told them straight that we'd know for certain once the van was half full, and that they would hear it from us the moment we knew rather than at the end of the day. That suited them. "That's fine, thank you. That was the kind of thing I had in mind," came back by email the week before. The estate was in probate and the bank accounts were still closed, so a solicitor in the town centre settled our invoice later from the funds once they were released. That arrangement is common here and it causes us no trouble — we will wait to be paid by an estate, and we will bill whoever the executor tells us to bill.
Two years before that we cleared a smaller Evesham property on the north side of town, still WR11. A full three-bed: one load, a second the same day, and a mattress on top. Nothing dramatic. What sticks in the memory is what came back when a payment link went out to that customer twice by mistake — "I already paid this on Saturday morning. The monies have been debited from my account." Fair enough. The office apologised and closed it off the same day. We mention it because the paperwork end of a clearance matters nearly as much as the lifting, and getting the billing wrong annoys people more than a scuffed door frame ever does.
The one that took three weeks, out past Pershore
The biggest house clearance we have done in this corner of Worcestershire wasn't in Evesham itself. It was a country property outside Pershore, WR10, being sold, and the sale could not complete until the whole site was empty. The house was only the start of it.
The instruction listed the main house — every room except the back half of the upper floor, which stayed — then all the outbuildings, a garden storeroom, the greenhouse, and after that the stable yard with every stable and every room coming off the yard. Plus rubbish. Plus tyres, a stack of them, which is a headache of its own, because tyres are chargeable at the tip and cannot be quietly buried in a mixed load.
We put a three-man team on it from the first of September and they were there most of the month. Skip hire ran alongside from day one, and by the second week we had a digger on site as well, because a stable yard that has been filling up slowly for years does not empty with wheelbarrows. Extra hands were added on the later days. It was run as days on site rather than by the vanload, because on a job that shape nobody can honestly work it out by the vanful in advance, and the party handling the sale had our invoices settled on completion.
That one still gets talked about in the van. Two weeks in, you stop noticing the greenhouse.
Where we go around here
Evesham sits in the Vale, in Wychavon, with the Avon looping right through the middle of it. We cover the whole of WR11 — the town, Bengeworth over the bridge, Hampton, and the villages hanging off it: Offenham, Badsey, Bretforton, Harvington, Wickhamford. WR10 takes in Pershore and the farmland between the two towns. Droitwich is a neighbour we run in the same week — house clearance in Droitwich has a page of its own if that is the property you are asking about. Worcester is half an hour west along the A44 and we are over there constantly — for anything that side, house clearance in Worcester is the page you want, and for the hills below it, house clearance in Malvern covers Great Malvern and the villages under the Beacon. Broadway and the villages under the escarpment towards the Cotswolds are within reach as well, and a good number of those clearances reach us through people selling on a second home.
Arriving by train, Evesham station is on the Cotswold Line between Worcester and Oxford, and a fair few of our probate customers come in on it from London for the day, meet the team at nine, and travel home that evening with the house done. Honeybourne is the other stop on the line, handier if you're coming up from the Chipping Campden and Broadway side. It's worth saying because if you're travelling in to be present, a one-day turnaround is usually realistic for an ordinary house clearance in Evesham.
Garage and loft clearance in Evesham
It is the loft, the garage and the workshop that stretch things into a second day, and it is nearly always the part people underestimate when they describe the property to us on the phone. Garage and loft clearance in Evesham means the things that got put somewhere out of the way twenty or thirty years ago and were never looked at again: rafters of suitcases and Christmas boxes, a dismantled bed frame, roof tiles left over from a repair, half-empty tins of paint on a shelf above the car, a chest freezer that has not been switched on since the last owner. Lofts are slow because everything comes down a ladder one armful at a time, and because you cannot see what is up there until somebody is standing in it with a torch.
Garages out on the newer estates are usually straightforward — the up-and-over door lifts, the van backs onto the drive, and the whole thing is done inside a morning. The older ones behind terraces in the middle of town are the awkward ones, sometimes reached down a shared entry too narrow for anything but a barrow. If there is a garage, a loft, a shed or a workshop involved, say so when you ring. It changes the number of hands we send, and it is far better dealt with the week before than at half past three on the day.
Parking, and what slows a day
The middle of Evesham is old, and the lanes behind the High Street were laid out for carts rather than tippers. Some terraces have no off-street parking whatever, and market days change what is free. None of that is a problem provided we know in advance — tell us when you book and the team plans round it, sometimes shuttling with a smaller vehicle and transferring further up the road. The newer estates on the edge of town are simple: onto the drive, tailgate down, away. Village work out towards Badsey and Bretforton can be more awkward than it looks on a map, because a narrow lane with a passing place every couple of hundred yards is no fun in a loaded van.
What actually happens to it all
Furniture, tools, crockery, unopened bedding, working electricals. If a thing still has a use in it, it should not be crushed. Charity shops in the Vale take a good deal, and reuse projects take more. What genuinely cannot be saved goes to a permitted transfer station, where it is weighed, tipped and recorded, so there is a paper trail running from your door to the weighbridge. Our waste carrier licence is CBDU419679, we are insured for the work, and if a solicitor or a managing agent wants the transfer notes for the file, ask and they are yours.
A few things carry their own handling route, and it is worth knowing before the day rather than on it. Fridges and freezers are classed as hazardous and need their own route out. Upholstered seating — sofas, armchairs, dining chairs, footstools — falls under the POPs rules, so the foam has to go to a permitted incinerator. Mattresses aren't POPs waste, but they still can't go in a mixed load. That is the law, not a policy we invented. Gas bottles, fire extinguishers, car tyres and tins of paint are all perfectly doable, and none of them may travel in an ordinary mixed load. Ask on the phone and you'll be told exactly what is involved, rather than finding it out with the van already outside. Loose rubbish with no furniture in it is a different job again — see house rubbish removal.
Cost, and how it is worked out
Send photographs — phone snaps of each room from the doorway are plenty, and the loft and garage too if you can get to them — and you'll get an honest estimate back. The estimate is free and puts you under no obligation. That is far more use to you than a number guessed blind over the telephone.
There is no deposit to pay before we start. The invoice goes out once the work is finished, and where the property is an estate we will invoice the executor, the administrator or the solicitor direct, and it can be settled from the estate once funds are released. Executors dealing with a house from another county — and we get a lot of those here — usually never have to handle any of it themselves. That side of things is covered in more detail on our probate house clearance page.
Houses that have got away from someone
Some of the properties we are called to are packed to the ceiling with a narrow path worn between the stacks. Nobody on the team passes remark, and nothing is photographed beyond the before-and-after shots we take for our own records. A hoarder house clearance is slower and needs more hands, and where bedding or waste has sat a long time we handle it as a verminous load, which needs different protection, but it does not put us off taking the work. We also keep our eyes open for the things that go missing in a house like that — envelopes, jewellery, documents, notes tucked in a coat pocket — and they go straight to whoever instructed us, not into the van. There is more on how we work those properties on the hoarder house clearance page.
Questions we get asked about house clearance in Evesham
Can you invoice the solicitor dealing with the estate?
Yes. We invoice the executor, the administrator or the solicitor direct, whichever the family tells us to, and it can be settled from the estate once the accounts are released. We are used to waiting on probate and it is not a problem.
Do I have to be there on the day?
No. We can collect a key from an estate agent, a neighbour or a keysafe, and email you photographs of the cleared rooms afterwards. If there are items of sentimental value to be set aside, list them in advance and they will be put by rather than loaded.
Do we need to box anything up first?
Not unless you want to. The team empties cupboards, wardrobes and drawers as they go, and will lift carpets and underlay and sweep through if that's what you've asked for. Families often do some of it themselves anyway, and that's fine — it just means fewer trips.
How long does a clearance usually take?
An ordinary house is generally a single day, starting at nine. What pushes it into a second day is a loft, a garage, a workshop or a shed, and occasionally the parking. We will tell you which we expect when we look at your photographs.
What can't you take in the van?
Fridges and freezers, upholstered seating under the POPs rules, mattresses, gas bottles, fire extinguishers, tyres and liquid paint all need handling separately from a mixed load. We can still take them — they just travel by a different route, so tell us what's there beforehand.
Want a figure for a clearance in Evesham, Pershore, Droitwich or the villages between them? Ring the office on 0800 046 5555, or send photographs through the form on this page and we'll price it properly. If the date depends on a completion, say so — we've worked around enough sales in the Vale to know how those dates move.
