Removals in Mile End E1 and E3

House removals Mile End: terraces, estates and the park in between

For most of its history Mile End was open fields and farmland selling hay, grain and livestock to the City, with a straggle of houses along the road to Bow. Around 1691 it became known as Mile End Old Town, to tell it apart from a newer settlement next to Spitalfields. The Regent's Canal was cut through the farmland in the years before 1820, Burdett Road was laid out in 1858 as the Victoria Park Approach Road and renamed in 1862, and the streets in between filled with terraced housing over the next forty years. Bombing in 1940 and 1941 then took out whole streets, and the cleared land became Mile End Park and the post-war estates.

That is why the same postcode can mean very different moves. The council's 2025 appraisal of the Clinton Road conservation area calls that street an important remnant of Victorian Mile End, because so much around it was destroyed. Below are the four kinds of home we are asked to move most often in E1 and E3, and what each one changes on the day.

Clinton Road and the streets by the canal

Between Grove Road and the Regent's Canal, north of Mile End Road, the houses date from after 1860, when the New Globe tavern's pleasure gardens were sold and Clinton Road, Ashcroft Road and their neighbours were built over them. They are mostly two-storey Victorian terraces, and a handful on Clinton Road have added a mansard storey on top. Grove Road has twentieth-century terraces of two storeys plus a mansard. Facing Mile End Road itself is a row of early nineteenth-century houses with shopfronts put in at ground level, next to the Guardian Angels church and school.

In a two-storey terrace the limit is the stair, not the size of the house. Straight flights with a tight turn at the top are common, and a mansard room adds a third flight that is usually steeper and narrower than the others. We ask what is upstairs that is large: a double wardrobe, a king-size bed frame, a sofa bed in a top-floor room. Those pieces get dismantled before they reach the landing, which is quicker than discovering on the day that they will not turn. Most of these houses fit in a single Luton van.

Ropery Street, Burdett Road and Bow Common Lane

South of the station, between Mile End Park and Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park, is a tight grid of late Victorian terraces. The council's appraisal of the Ropery Street conservation area, designated in 1987, describes houses built for rope and twine workers next to the old ropewalks on Bow Common Lane, and a run of two-storey terraces along Mossford Street, Eric Street, Ropery Street, Lockhart Street and Maritime Street. Almost all were built with a long rear extension and no basement, and many have since been extended again at the back. Sacrum Terrace and Twine Terrace stand where the London General Omnibus Company once kept its stables and bus depot.

Those back additions matter on a move. The kitchen and often a bathroom sit in the narrow rear wing, so a fridge-freezer or washing machine comes out through a passage barely wider than the appliance. We measure that passage and the front door before the day. Along Burdett Road the buildings are three storeys, with shops on the ground floor and living space above, so the move starts with a side door and a stair rather than a hallway. Our notes on what changes when your flat sits over a shop cover the separate-entrance and shop-hours problems that come with it.

Council and housing association blocks

The war damage left large gaps. The same appraisal records that bombs destroyed the east side of Eric Street and Carter Street, now Treby Street, and post-war housing replaced them; the Eric and Treby estate now wraps the north side of the conservation area, with another estate south of Bow Common Lane. Similar post-war blocks sit across the district, from walk-up flats of three or four floors to taller blocks with a lift.

For a flat in one of these blocks we want to know the floor, whether there is a lift and its inside measurements, and how far the block entrance is from the nearest place a van can legally stand. A walk-up on the fourth floor with no lift adds a person to the crew and time to the day, and our notes on moving out of a flat with no lift explain how the price is worked out. Parking on the estate itself has its own rules, set out further down this page.

Rooms around Queen Mary

Queen Mary University of London has its main campus on Mile End Road, and its accommodation office lists halls on or near the Mile End site as well as private halls and shared houses nearby. That puts a lot of short moves into the calendar: a room in halls to a shared house in Bow or Stepney, one house share to another, or everything back home at the end of the course. Most of these are a few boxes, a desk chair and a bike, which a single van and two people can clear in a morning. Our checklist for moving out of student halls in London covers the inventory, key return and what to do with things you will not take.

The whole of Greater London is inside the ULEZ, and Mile End is outside the Congestion Charge zone, so a move that starts and ends in E1 or E3 pays neither. If yours ends in the City or the West End, our note on what ULEZ and the Congestion Charge mean for a removal van explains how that is priced.

Call 020 3983 5199 with the street, the floor and what is going, and we will price the move from that.

Mile End removal prices

These bands are a starting point. The figure we confirm is fixed once the stairs, the lift and the parking are known.

Guide figures only. A fourth-floor walk-up, or a terrace whose only parking is a red route loading bay, usually sits towards the top of its band.

Districts next to Mile End

These neighbouring districts each have their own page: