Removals in East Barnet EN4

An old village with interwar houses: what that means on move day

The name East Barnet was in use by 1294, according to the council’s pocket history of East Barnet Village. A bridge over Pymmes Brook, recorded as Katebrygge in 1406, gave its name to Cat Hill and to the Cat Inn, which stood until it burned down in 1955. The big house in the middle of the village, known as the Clockhouse for its little clock turret, was pulled down in 1925 and replaced by Clockhouse Parade, which reused the old clock tower as decoration. Jackson Road and Capel Road were laid out in the 1880s, and Thornton Road takes its name from the local man who paid for much of the village school. Even after the railway arrived at what is now New Barnet in 1850, the history notes, nobody rushed to build here.

The rush came later. Barnet’s own characterisation study of the borough describes the Oakleigh Park and East Barnet area as detached and semi-detached houses on regular streets, most of them built in the 1920s and 1930s, with substantial building of the same period around the old village itself. That is the housing stock we move people out of here, week in, week out, and it has a pattern.

The interwar semi, room by room

A 1930s semi in EN4 typically has two reception rooms downstairs, two double bedrooms and a box room upstairs, and often a staircase with a quarter-turn near the top. The quarter-turn is where a wardrobe or a king-size headboard gets stuck, so we ask about the biggest pieces before we quote and take them apart in the room rather than on the landing. Many of these houses have been extended into the loft or out at the back since they were built, which adds a bedroom’s worth of furniture to a house that still looks like a three-bed from the road. When the household has been in the house for fifteen or twenty years, the loft, the garage and the shed between them often hold as much as the rest of the house. We count every one of those spaces on the call, because they decide whether the job is one Luton van or a 7.5-tonne lorry, and our guide to choosing the right size of removal vehicle shows how that decision is made. Our house removals service then sends the crew size to match.

Detached houses on the slopes

The same study describes the ground across this corner of the borough as undulating, and it shows at the front door. On a road that runs across a slope, a house can sit above the pavement behind a flight of steps, or below it down a sloping drive. Neither stops a move, but both change how long it takes. Steps mean every box is carried rather than wheeled, so we bring more hands and plan the heavy items for when the crew is fresh. A steep or narrow drive may take a Luton van but not a lorry, in which case the bigger vehicle stays on the road and a shorter carry is planned from there. A piano in a front room above a flight of steps is a job for our piano and specialist items team, and our notes on what is involved in moving an upright or a grand explain why we ask about the steps first.

Families moving in, owners moving down

Most of the moves we see in East Barnet fall into two groups. One is a family arriving for the space, the gardens and the schools, often from a flat further into London, and moving a house’s worth of belongings for the first time. If that is you, our advice on planning a house move around the children is worth reading before the date is fixed. The other is an owner leaving a family house after many years for something smaller, where the hard part is not the carrying but deciding what goes. For that kind of move we often split the job in two: a first visit for the things going to family, a charity or the tip, and then the move itself. Our packing team can do the packing the day before, so move day is only loading, and our guide to downsizing from a house to a flat covers the measuring that saves you paying to move furniture that will not fit.

The village end and the flats

Not everything is a house. A flat over a shop or in one of the smaller purpose-built blocks comes with a different set of questions: which floor, whether there is a lift, and whether the only way in is a street door next to a shopfront. For those, our flat removals crews plan the van position and the stairs before the day. The nearest stations are on the Great Northern line at Oakleigh Park and New Barnet, with Cockfosters at the end of the Piccadilly line just over the Enfield boundary, so a flat near any of them is busiest at the morning and evening peaks. We aim to be loaded before the evening rush.

Call 020 3983 5199 with your EN4 address, the floor and what is in the garage and loft for a fixed price.

Removal prices in East Barnet

Guide prices for an EN4 move. Your fixed quote includes any council parking fee:

Guide figures only. An extended semi with a full garage and loft, steps up from the pavement, or a lorry that has to stand on the road can move an East Barnet job into the next band.

Next door to East Barnet

The roads between Cat Hill, the old village and Oak Hill Park are covered from this page. These neighbouring places have pages of their own, and for a few pieces of furniture rather than a whole house, our man and van service covers the same streets by the hour.