Removals in Brentford, from The Butts to the Great West Road

Removals Brentford: Georgian houses, 1880s terraces and towers by the canal

Hounslow Council's own description of the town is the best place to start: mostly two-storey terraced housing and suburban estates, cut east to west by the railway, the A4 Great West Road and the elevated M4, with the Piccadilly line along the northern edge and the Grand Union Canal and the River Brent meeting the Thames at the bottom of the High Street. Each of those strips loads differently. Below are the four kinds of move we price most often in TW8, and what each one means for the van, the crew and the parking.

The Butts, Market Place and Upper Butts

The Butts is Brentford's old market square, a conservation area since November 1968. According to the council's appraisal of The Butts, most of the houses around the square are late seventeenth and eighteenth-century, two storeys in brown brick with sash windows, and many have basements and attics with their original dormers. For us that means three working levels in a house that looks like two: a basement kitchen, a narrow main stair and an attic room where the wardrobe was assembled in place. Houses such as 42 to 46 have stone steps up to the front door, and the Victorian group at 1 to 13 has tiled front paths that we cover before the first box goes out.

The square itself was relaid around 2000 as a gravelled surface with informal parking, so the van can usually get close, but the lanes off it are another matter. The appraisal describes Somerset Road, Upper Butts and part of Market Place as narrow, with very narrow or no footways, and says Market Place pinches down to a walkway only fit for pedestrians where it meets the square. We do not try to bring a Luton through there. For an Upper Butts or Somerset Road address we plan where the van stops, measure the carry and send an extra porter if the walk is long. If you are moving into one of these houses, our guide to getting furniture down to a lower-ground floor covers the sofa-and-stairwell problem.

Brentford New Town: Albany Road to Windmill Road

North of the High Street, between the Hounslow Loop railway and Ealing Road, is the area Hounslow calls Brentford New Town, protected as the St Paul's conservation area since February 1989. The council's 2021 draft appraisal of St Paul's describes the north side of Albany Road as terraces less than four metres wide, with one sash window downstairs and one up, and dates Perseverance Cottages to 1882. Brook Road South, Grosvenor Road and Lateward Road are pairs of London stock-brick houses with a canted bay. Clifden Road and Hamilton Road have larger Victorian villas, some of them three storeys, and Windmill Road has a row of stucco villas built in pairs.

A frontage under four metres usually means a narrow hall and a tight stair, with very little room to turn a chest of drawers. On these streets we take beds and wardrobes apart upstairs, wrap the pieces and carry them flat. Grosvenor Road and Albany Road slope down towards St Paul's Recreation Ground, which matters when a piano or a range cooker goes on a dolly. The terraces east of here, around the old Griffin Park football ground, are the same two-storey type, and our house removal crews plan them in the same way.

Brentford Towers, Haverfield and Brentford Dock

Across Ealing Road the council's documents name two estates: the low-rise 1970s Haverfield Estate and the high-rise Green Dragon Estate, better known as the Brentford Towers. South of the High Street is the post-war Brentford Dock estate, built on the former railway dock next to what is now Brentford Marina. The canal appraisal notes that cars reach the Dock estate from Augustus Close, over a bridge built in 1859 for the old dock railway. That bridge is the way the van comes in, so we look at where it can stop and turn inside the estate before the day, not when it arrives.

In the towers the lift decides the timetable. We ask the housing office or managing agent whether a lift can be reserved or padded, and we measure the lift car against your largest piece before quoting. Our flat removal team then works floor by floor with a porter at the lift door, so neither the lift nor the van stands idle. The newer blocks at Great West Quarter and Ferry Quays have their own loading arrangements, and we book whatever slot the building's management sets. Our notes on lifts, concierges and loading bays in managed blocks list the questions worth asking your building before you book anyone.

Office removals Brentford: the Golden Mile and the business centres

Hounslow's appraisals call the A4 Great West Road Brentford's 'Golden Mile', and they mention the Brook Lane Business Centre on the site of the old rail sidings north of the New Town. Where an office on the A4 has its own car park or goods entrance we use it, because the road itself is a red route and the van cannot wait on the kerb. For office moves we confirm the goods-in route with your building manager, label desks and crates by floor plan, and run the job on an evening or a weekend. That way your phones and screens are back on before Monday.

Removals and storage Brentford: when completion dates do not line up

Chains break in TW8 as they do everywhere else. When you have to be out of a flat in the Towers before the house on Clifden Road is ready, we load once, hold your things in our storage and deliver when the keys arrive. We add our packing service for anything that has to sit in storage for a few weeks, such as framed pictures, books and kitchenware from a Butts basement.

What removals in Brentford cost

These figures are our guide prices for TW8. The final fixed price depends on the floor, the carry from the van and how much you own:

Guide prices only. Any Hounslow bay suspension fee is quoted to you as a separate line within the fixed price.

Areas next to Brentford

West along the London Road is Isleworth, north across the M4 are the Ealing streets, and east past Kew Bridge is Chiswick. Each has its own page: