Removals in Collier Row, from Chase Cross to Clockhouse Lane

House removals Collier Row: a 1930s estate suburb on the edge of the Green Belt

Havering Council’s own Character Study, published in August 2024, describes Collier Row as one of two large housing estates built in the borough to ease the housing shortage in central London. Collier Row went up in the 1930s; Harold Hill, the other, was finished in 1958. The study files Collier Row under its “suburban cottage estate” type: short runs of terraces, pairs of semis and bungalows on planned streets, with the shops built into the layout. Ninety years on, that is still what a removal here looks like. The houses are two storeys or one, the stairs are ordinary domestic stairs, and the furniture comes out through a front door that opens onto a small front garden or a drive.

The same study points out that parts of the area were first laid out with very large gardens. For a removal crew that matters as much as the house. A long garden in Collier Row often ends in a shed, a summer house, a greenhouse or a stack of patio furniture, and all of it has to come back up the garden and out through the side gate or through the house. A three-bedroom semi with a full garden and a boarded loft can fill more van than a four-bedroom flat, so we ask about the garden on the phone rather than finding out on the day.

Getting around is by road. The study records that only small parts of Collier Row reach a public transport access level of 3 or better, and that 58% of journeys starting in Havering are made by car, the second-highest share in London. The nearest trains are at Romford, south across the A12. On a street where most houses have a car, the space outside your door on a Saturday morning is not guaranteed, so we decide where the van will stand before we set off, not when we turn into your road.

Semis and short terraces

A typical Collier Row semi or end-of-terrace has three bedrooms, two reception rooms or a knocked-through lounge, and often a single-storey extension at the back. For that we usually bring a Luton with a tail-lift and a crew of two or three, depending on the loft and the garden; our guide to choosing the right van size for a London move shows how the load is worked out. Mid-terrace houses have no side access, so anything from the garden comes through the hall. We put floor protection down from the back door to the front before the first item moves, and we take the garden last so the house is clear by then.

Bungalows and downsizing moves

Bungalows are one of the three house types the council lists for this part of the borough. They load quickly because there are no stairs, but they are often fuller than they look. A bungalow that has been a family home for decades tends to have a boarded loft reached by a fold-down ladder, and the loft is where the time goes: boxes come down one at a time, so we send a third person to work the hatch. A lot of bungalow moves are downsizing moves, either a couple going somewhere smaller or a family clearing a parent’s home. If that is your move, our guide to planning a move for an elderly parent covers the decisions to make first, and anything nobody is ready to part with can go into storage between homes while the family decides.

Flats above the district centre shops

Collier Row’s shopping parade is one of Havering’s six district centres, around the junction of Collier Row Road and Collier Row Lane. The council’s 2016 town-centre audit counted 78 units there, about half of them shops and the rest mostly cafes, takeaways, estate agents and other services. Where a shop has a flat above it, the flat normally has its own door at the side or the back and one steep flight of stairs, which decides how big a sofa can go up. The council car park at Rex Close has 107 spaces and a 6 ft 6 in height limit, so a removal van cannot use it; we load from the street instead. Our article on moving into or out of a flat above a shop explains what to measure before you book.

Shops and small offices in RM5

The parade also brings small business moves: an estate agent changing premises, a cafe refitting, a back office above a shop moving to a bigger room. We do these out of trading hours or on a Sunday so the shop does not close, and our office and business removals team can disconnect and reconnect tills and PCs through IT relocation if the move includes equipment.

Ring 020 3983 5199 with your RM5 street and the number of bedrooms, and tell us about the loft and the garden. We will come back with a fixed price.

Removals Collier Row: guide prices

Guide figures for RM5 homes, before we have seen the loft and the garden:

A bungalow with a full loft or a semi with a large garden building can sit at the top of its band. Your fixed quote replaces these figures.

Around Collier Row

Collier Row has Havering Country Park and the Green Belt to the north, Hainault and the boundary with Redbridge to the west, Rise Park to the east, and Mawneys and the A12 Eastern Avenue to the south. The neighbouring areas with their own pages are: