Removals in Fitzrovia W1T

What a move out of a Fitzrovia building involves

Fitzrovia was built quickly and built tight. Camden’s appraisal of the Charlotte Street area dates most of it to 1750–1770, laid out plot by plot by builders who leased the land from individual owners, while the streets round Fitzroy Square followed between the 1790s and the 1830s. The result is the same almost everywhere: terraced houses of three or four storeys that fill their plots right to the back, with a small basement area behind railings at the front and little or no space behind. Over the nineteenth century many of those houses were divided up, with shops put into the ground floors and flats and offices above, and that is what we are usually moving in and out of today.

For a removal, that shape matters more than the postcode. Everything leaves by the front door, often down a staircase that turns at every landing and was built for a household, not for a three-seater sofa. The ground floor is frequently somebody else’s business, so the hallway to the street may be shared, narrow and in use while we work. We ask for the floor, the number of flights and the widest piece of furniture when you call, and if anything looks tight we come and measure. Our notes on carrying a whole flat down without a lift explain how we pace a long carry so the crew is not running out of time by the last load.

Fitzroy Square: three sides without a road

Fitzroy Square is the clearest case of a Fitzrovia address where a van cannot pull up outside. Camden’s 2010 appraisal records that it is pedestrianised and that vehicle access was kept only on the north side; on the other three sides the old roadways are now marked by lines of granite setts in the gravel. The east and south sides are the Adam brothers’ Portland stone terraces, listed grade I, and the stucco west side is grade II*. Over the years these houses have been hotels, offices, charities and embassies, and some have since gone back to flats or family homes.

Moving from one of them, we stand the van on the north side or in Fitzroy Street or Conway Street, depending on where the bay is, and wheel everything across the paving on padded trolleys. That takes longer than loading at the kerb, and we build it into the price rather than finding out on the day. Where the address has diplomatic bays outside, they are off limits: Camden does not allow loading in them at all.

Charlotte Street, Goodge Place and the smaller streets

South of Maple Street the houses get smaller. Goodge Place and Percy Street keep the most complete Georgian terraces, most of them listed, and Goodge Place and Colville Place are among the few streets that are mainly homes rather than mixed use. On Colville Place and Charlotte Place the houses are two windows wide, a fair sign of how narrow the rooms and stairs are inside. For a top-floor flat in one of these we allow extra time for the stairs and keep one person with the van while the others carry.

There are a few larger buildings too. 60 Charlotte Street is a ten-storey block of flats on a podium, and 4–14 Cleveland Street is a late-Victorian mansion block. In buildings like these the managing agent may want the lift booked and protected and the move kept to set hours, so we ask you to check the building rules when you book. If the flat you are leaving sits above a restaurant or shop, our guide to moving out of a flat over a shop covers shared entrances and trading hours.

The mews: setts, archways and old workshops

Behind the main streets run the mews that once served the big houses. Warren Mews, Grafton Mews, Fitzroy Mews and Richardson’s Mews still have granite sett surfaces, and some, like Warren Mews, are reached under an archway through the terrace in front. Few of the original two-storey mews buildings survive; most were replaced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by three-storey warehouses and workshops with large windows, loading doors and hoists on the upper floors, and some of those are now homes or studios. A Luton van may not fit under every arch, so for a mews address we check the entrance height and width before we choose the vehicle, and we wrap anything heavy before it goes over the setts.

Offices, studios and shops

Most buildings in Fitzrovia carry two or three uses at once, so a business move here is usually a small office or studio on the upper floors of a townhouse rather than a whole building. We move these in the evening or at the weekend, label desks and equipment by room, and keep the stairs clear for the people who still live and work above and below. For the order of jobs in the weeks before, our London office move planning guide is a good starting point, and our office removals team handles the crating and the setup at the other end.

Call 020 3983 5199 with your W1T street and floor for a fixed price.

Fitzrovia removals price guide

Guide prices for a Fitzrovia move. Your fixed quote includes the Congestion Charge and any bay suspension:

Guide figures only. A top-floor flat with no lift, a carry across Fitzroy Square or a two-council move can put a Fitzrovia job into the next band.

Around Fitzrovia

Goodge Street, Warren Street and the streets either side of Cleveland Street are all covered from this page. For a move that starts or ends next door, these neighbouring areas have their own pages, and for one or two pieces rather than a whole flat our man and van service works the same streets by the hour.