Removals in Chessington

Removals Chessington: a suburb built in short bursts

At the start of the twentieth century Chessington was still fields, a few farms and a handful of large houses along the lanes between Hook and Ewell. The Royal Borough of Kingston’s own character study of the area describes what came next as pockets of housing built over a short period between the late 1930s and the 1950s, and then again in the 1970s. The railway arrived in 1939, with Chessington North and Chessington South both in TfL zone 6, and Chessington South is still the end of the line: the extension to Leatherhead was never built, and a strip of woodland called Chessington Wood marks where it would have run.

That history matters for a move because it means a road in KT9 tends to be all of one kind. When you tell us the street, we usually know whether we are looking at a 1930s semi with a hatch to the loft, a 1950s council terrace with a long garden, an upper maisonette with its own front door and stair, or a 1980s house on a small plot in a cul-de-sac. What we then need from you is what has changed since it was built and how much is in it.

The late-1930s semis: Fircroft Road, Hook Rise and Moor Lane

The first wave came in the late 1930s. The council’s study picks out Fircroft Road and Hook Rise for their mansard-fronted semis, Ashcroft Road for its side-access pairs, Moorfield Road for semis mixed with bungalows, Rhodrons Avenue for its curved “suntrap” bays and Moor Lane for tile-hung semis with Tudor gables. Inside, these houses usually follow the pattern of the decade: a narrow hall, a stair that turns at a small landing, three bedrooms with the third one small, and a loft reached by a hatch on the landing. Corner sofas, tall wardrobes and American fridge-freezers are the things to measure, and our guide to what happens when furniture will not go through the door explains the options before the day rather than on it.

Fircroft Road, Ashcroft Road and Moorfield Road have no grass verges or street trees, and the houses park on their own plots. That makes the drive the most useful space on the job. If it can be cleared for the morning, a 3.5-tonne Luton can usually stand on or across it; if the cars stay, the van goes in the road and the carry gets longer.

Home removals Chessington: council terraces, maisonettes and long gardens

The second wave was built by the old Surbiton Borough Council in the 1950s, and you can still spot it. Short terraces with pantiled roofs line parts of Moor Lane, Coutts Avenue and Sanger Avenue, some still carrying the borough council’s emblem, and in Coutts Avenue and Sanger Avenue the blocks are set at an angle of 45 degrees to the road, so the front door can be further from the kerb than it looks. The Chessington Court estate around Frimley Road, built on the site of one of the area’s old houses, has maisonettes arranged as formal terraces with wide grass verges and communal planting. An upper maisonette usually has its own front door at street level and an internal stair, and that stair is the narrowest part of the job.

The 1950s terraces on Chantry Road and Roebuck Road are a different shape again: very long plots, with garages at the far end reached by long rear accesses, and land that falls away to the east with views towards Epsom Downs. A shed, a workshop or a garage full of tools at the bottom of a garden like that is a long walk with every load, so we ask about it and price it in. Many of the verges along those roads have been lost to pavement parking, which matters for where the van can stand.

The 1970s and 1980s estates

The third wave is the planned estate east of Chantry Road, built in the 1970s and 1980s around estate roads and cul-de-sacs, with small terraced houses on small plots, open front gardens and parking on the plot. The character study lists on-street parking as a problem there, and in practice a removal van in one of those closes has to share the turning head with residents’ cars. Ranyard Close, off Fullers Way South, has 1980s terraces on a narrow street. In the south, the newer houses round Merritt Gardens can only be reached from Nigel Fisher Way and Coppard Gardens, and the layout is not easy to follow, so a postcode alone can bring a lorry to the wrong end. We plan the way in from the street and house number you send us, and for a tight cul-de-sac we may send a smaller van, or two, rather than one large vehicle that cannot turn.

Houses on these estates are compact, and the stair in a two-storey terraced house of that period is usually straight and steep. The rooms take a standard sofa and double bed without trouble, but a large wardrobe or a king-size divan base can be awkward at the top of the stairs. Our house removal crews take beds and wardrobes apart as a matter of routine, and our packing team can box up the kitchen and the books the day before so the van is loaded quickly while the road is quiet.

Leatherhead Road, Bridge Road and the south of Chessington

South of Bridge Road, the A243 Leatherhead Road is the main route through Chessington. The council’s study describes it as carrying large numbers of vehicles and prone to congestion at peak times, and it runs past Chessington World of Adventures and Barwell Business Park on the way to the M25. We do not plan to load on the Leatherhead Road or on Bridge Road, which is a dual carriageway; for houses fronting either, we look for the nearest side road or a rear access. Behind them, Cheshire Gardens has terraces with tile-hung bays and bungalows and semis at its southern end, Bolton Road and Ellingham Road have long back gardens and a mix of bungalows, detached houses and semis, Parbury Rise has curved pebble-dashed terraces, and Compton Crescent is laid out as a curved set piece. Church Lane is older and more irregular, with Victorian cottages and the old flint parish church. A bungalow move is often the simplest of all: no stairs, a short path, and the crew can load room by room.

Office removals Chessington: business parks and small units

Commercial moves in Chessington are rarely offices in the town-centre sense. They tend to be units on Barwell Business Park, small firms on the industrial estate off Cox Lane, shops on North Parade and the small parade on Hook Rise South, and home offices in a box room. Our commercial moving crews can work in the evening or at the weekend when the yard or the parade is quiet, and our IT relocation team disconnects and reconnects the computers and network at the other end.

Families, schools and downsizing

A lot of the housing here was built for families, and the moves follow from that: a couple moving up from a maisonette to a semi, or a family moving within KT9 to stay near a school. If you are moving with young children, our article on keeping children settled through a house move covers how to plan the day around them. The other common move is the reverse: someone who has lived in the same Chessington semi or bungalow for decades going somewhere smaller. That move is mostly sorting, and our storage between dates can hold whatever is not ready to go. Chessington is inside Greater London, so the ULEZ applies here; our explainer on what the ULEZ means for a removal van covers the detail, and any charge is already in the quoted price.