Removals in Balham, SW12

Removals Balham: the houses between three commons

Wandsworth Council’s conservation area appraisals are the best short history of Balham we know of, and they explain most of what we find on moving day. The settlement was recorded as ‘Belgeham’ in the Domesday Book and stayed a hamlet on the London road until the 1770s. Shops opened on Balham Hill in the 1820s, the first villas went up in the late 1830s, and the station that opened in 1856 turned the fields into a suburb. Each of those stages left a different kind of house, and each one moves differently.

So when you ask us for a price, the first questions are about the building. Is it a whole house or a floor of a converted villa? Is there a tiled front path and an iron gate, a basement with railings around the lightwell, or a shopfront downstairs? Is the road a Wandsworth street with permit bays, or one of the main roads that TfL looks after? The answers decide the crew size, the van and how long the carry takes, far more than the number of bedrooms does.

House removals Balham: the Heaver Estate grid

South of the town centre, east of Balham High Road and running down to Tooting Bec Common, is the Heaver Estate. Alfred Heaver built it between about 1890 and 1910 in a Queen Anne style, on farmland and on the grounds of a Regency house called Bedford Hill House, and the council describes it as one of the highest-quality areas of late Victorian suburban housing and flats in the borough. The streets are a grid: Elmbourne Road, Hillbury Road, Huron Road, Louisville Road, Drakefield Road, Streathbourne Road, Ritherdon Road, Veronica Road, Terrapin Road and others, with the grandest houses facing the Common.

For a removal crew the details that matter are at the front. These houses have tessellated tile paths, low walls with cast-iron gates, and in many cases railings that the council has encouraged owners to reinstate. We put boards over tiled paths and step edges, open gates fully and tie them back, and carry long pieces such as sofas and wardrobes end-first through the gate rather than over the wall. Where the railings guard a basement lightwell, the front of the house narrows, so we measure before we decide what comes out first. If a sofa went in before a door was replaced, our page on getting a sofa through a Victorian front door covers what we can take apart.

Home removals Balham from the oldest streets

East of the High Road, between Balham Hill and the station, Old Devonshire Road and Balham New Road are the first streets in Balham built away from the main road. Balham New Road was laid out in the late 1820s; the villas on the south side and along Devonshire Road, as it was first called, followed from the late 1830s; terraces replaced several of them between the 1860s and the 1920s. The appraisal notes that many of the larger houses have been divided into flats, that there are 1970s and 1980s blocks at the eastern end, and that the old builders’ yards at the western end are now homes.

In practice that means one street can give us a top-floor flat in an 1840s villa, a ground-floor conversion with its own side door, and a flat in one of the newer buildings on the old yard sites. Balham New Road is narrow, so we look at where the van can stand before we quote, and Old Devonshire Road is wider. The eastern end of both streets meets Cavendish Road, which is the boundary between Wandsworth and Lambeth; more on that in the parking section below.

Nightingale Lane, Bracken Avenue and the west side

West of the High Road, the Nightingale Lane conservation area has grand villas with broad frontages, two parades of shops on the south side of the Lane, eighteen Grade II listed buildings and one Grade II*. It also takes in the Endlesham Road, Ramsden Road and Nightingale Square streets, Western Lane, the St Luke’s Church and Old Park Avenue area, and Bracken Avenue, a run of Arts and Crafts terraces. Clapham South station, just to the east, was originally called Nightingale Lane.

Larger houses here can mean larger furniture: extending dining tables, glazed bookcases, sometimes a piano. We plan those as separate lifts with extra hands and straps, and if something is too valuable to risk on a normal load, it travels on its own with our piano and specialist items crew.

Culverden Road and Dinsmore Road

Two smaller conservation areas show how varied Balham is. Culverden Road was laid out in the 1880s in the middle of a field, about a quarter of a mile south of the town centre; its curve gives the late Victorian houses uncommonly long front gardens, and its south side backs onto Tooting Bec Common. The Priory, a Grade II listed house built between 1810 and 1820, stands at its southern end. Dinsmore Road, about 300 metres north of Old Devonshire Road at the Balham Hill end, is an early Edwardian estate of dense housing with gabled fronts set along a gentle serpentine curve.

Long front gardens add carrying time, and we price that in rather than finding it on the day. On Dinsmore Road the houses sit close together, so we keep the loading tidy and the pavement clear for neighbours while the van is outside.

Office removals Balham: shops, practices and small firms

Business moves in Balham tend to be compact: a shop on Balham High Road or Bedford Hill, a practice above a parade, a studio in one of the converted buildings, or the light industrial units the council still records at 36–40 Old Devonshire Road. Most can only close for a day, so we move them after hours or at the weekend, with desks, files and screens labelled by room. Our notes on planning a small business relocation in London set out the order we work in, and the office removals team handles the move itself.

Removals and storage Balham households use between dates

Chains in SW12 often involve a sale of a flat in a converted villa and the purchase of a house a few streets away, which means two completion dates that do not always line up. When they slip, we collect on the day you have to leave, keep everything in our storage units, and deliver when the keys are released. Our guide to short-term storage between two completions explains how long items can stay and how the second delivery is booked.

What a Balham move typically costs

These are our guide figures for Balham. The final price depends on the floor, the carry from the van, and whether there is a piano or a basement involved, and it is fixed in writing before you book.

Guide figures only. A Wandsworth bay suspension is added at the council’s own fee, shown as a separate line on your SW12 quote.

Around Balham

Clapham South, Nightingale Lane and Tooting Bec are part of the Balham we cover from this page. For moves that start or finish next door, these neighbouring areas have their own pages, and for a single item rather than a whole home our man and van service covers the same streets.