Removals in Heathrow

Removals Heathrow: a hamlet under the runways and three villages beside them

Before there was an airport, Heathrow was one of five small settlements in the old parish of Harmondsworth, on the western edge of Middlesex. The Victoria County History account of Harmondsworth describes a line of houses along Heathrow Road, running south from the Bath Road at King’s Arbour across the edge of Hounslow Heath. It counted 14 houses in 1583, and by 1839 the place still had only a public house where the other villages had shops. In 1930 the Fairey Aviation Company opened a private airfield, the Great West Aerodrome, south-west of the hamlet. In 1944 the Air Ministry took it over for an RAF transport base, and Heathrow and the neighbouring farm at Perry Oaks were demolished entirely. Civil flights began in January 1946, and Heathrow Road, Cain’s Lane and the lanes around them disappeared under the runways.

What survived are the three villages on the north side of the Bath Road. Harmondsworth, the old parish centre, sits about half a kilometre from the airport boundary, with the M4 to the north and the M25 to the west. Sipson is a little under a mile east of it, first recorded in 1214. Longford grew up along the Bath Road itself, where travellers forded the Colne. In 1949 the parish was folded into Yiewsley and West Drayton, and since 1965 it has been part of the London Borough of Hillingdon. Addresses in all three carry UB7 postcodes with West Drayton as the post town, which is worth knowing when a sat-nav or a booking form insists on “Heathrow”.

So when someone asks us for a move “at Heathrow”, it is nearly always one of two jobs. Either it is a house or flat in one of these villages, or it is a business inside the TW6 boundary: an airline office, a freight agent, a hotel’s back office. The two could hardly be more different, and the rest of this page takes them in turn.

Harmondsworth: The Green, Summerhouse Lane and the closes

Hillingdon designated Harmondsworth Village a conservation area on 29 January 1970, one of the first in the borough, and the council’s Harmondsworth Village appraisal is the best guide to how the place is laid out. The historic core is a small triangular green, with the Five Bells and the Crown public houses, the listed Gables Store building, a K6 telephone kiosk and St Mary’s Church behind. West of the church, the Great Barn of 1426–27 is a Grade I scheduled monument with twelve bays under one roof. Thirteen buildings in the conservation area are listed, along with several runs of wall. The appraisal describes the buildings on The Green as mostly pubs, offices and a care home, so very few of the homes we move are on it; they are on the lanes and closes that lead away from it.

Summerhouse Lane is the one that needs planning. It runs south from the village centre between Harmondsworth Hall and Harvard House, the brick house of 1675 with the date over the door, through a narrow entrance flanked by old walls about one and a half metres high, before opening out halfway along around a small green with trees. At the far end the houses are 1970s yellow-brick semis and bungalows. We never let the crew take a long vehicle in blind: on the video survey we look at the entrance and the green, and if a 7.5-tonne lorry would have to reverse the length of the lane, we send a Luton instead and make two runs.

Candover Close, off Hatch Lane, dates from the late 1930s and is laid out like a long letter E on its side, with rounded turning circles at the north and south ends. The houses are semis with hipped red-tile roofs and front gables, some pebble-dashed and some in plain brick. Those turning circles are the reason we are happy to book a Luton for a family move here, though we still confirm from the street photo that nothing is parked across the circle on the day. South-west of Moor Lane the houses are 1950s and 1960s two-storey rendered semis; Cambridge Close, School Road and Moorland Road are 1970s semis and bungalows. A bungalow is usually the quickest load in the parish, with everything on one floor and a short path to the gate.

Two newer developments sit behind historic buildings on the High Street. Acacia Mews, from the 1980s, is tucked behind the listed Acacia House; Meadowlea Close, from the 1990s, mixes detached houses with two- and three-storey blocks around an early Victorian yellow-brick house. The blocks have communal stairs, so we ask which floor and whether there is a lift before choosing the crew size.

Sipson: lanes, 1930s building and the motorway spur

Sipson was always the smaller of the villages, a group of houses either side of Sipson Road with a second cluster at Sipson Green, where the road met the Bath Road. In the 19th century orchards and glasshouses surrounded it; in the 1930s houses went up along Sipson Road, around Blunts Avenue and along the north side of the Bath Road at Sipson Green. When the M4 opened in 1964, the branch road to the airport was cut through to the east of the village, passing under Sipson Lane, Sipson Road and the Bath Road. That spur is how most of our vans arrive: off the motorway and straight down, without going through West Drayton at all.

The Sipson houses we move are mostly semis from that interwar building and the decades after it, and a garage or shed at the back often holds as much as a bedroom, so we ask about it on the survey. For a three-bedroom semi off Blunts Avenue or Doghurst Drive, a Luton and three people are usually enough, provided the van can stand outside. Our house removal crews plan the order of rooms the day before, and our packing team can box up the kitchen and the loft on the previous afternoon if your own week is full.

Longford: a village street on the old Bath Road

Longford is a single long street. Hillingdon’s Longford Village appraisal explains the name: the settlement stretched from the first bridge by Harmondsworth almost to Colnbrook, along what was the coaching road from London to Bath. It once had four public houses, and the appraisal names the White Horse and the King’s Arms as the two that remain. In 1929 the Colnbrook by-pass took through traffic away to the north, and the village has kept much of its old form since, inside the Green Belt.

The houses along the Bath Road here are an unusual mix for a removal. The thatched cottage at 532 Bath Road stands with its side wall right on the pavement edge, so the front door is close to the kerb. Queen River Cottage and Willow Tree Cottage, dated 1739, are set back behind what was the village green, with Maywin Cottages, a Victorian pair at 522 and 524, built on part of that green later. Numbers 536 to 550 are 1930s houses with front gardens. Further along are Yeomans at 561, a timber-framed house of the 16th century, and Weekly House at 583, built in brick in the 17th century. Low ceilings, narrow stairs and old doorways are normal in these older houses, and our guide to what changes when the house you are leaving is listed covers protecting the fabric on the day.

North of the Bath Road a bridge crosses the Colne to The Island, where the appraisal picks out Colne Cottage with its corner turret, Island Cottage and The Loft, alongside a 1970s block of flats and Orchard Court. The road ends in a turning area around a single tree on a small traffic island. We look at the bridge and that turning space on every Island survey, because they decide whether the job is a lorry or a Luton making two trips.

Inside the airport boundary: offices and staff moves

Inside TW6 the work is commercial. An airline’s office, a cargo agent or a hotel moving its administration floor is a job for our office removals team, and it runs to the building’s rules rather than the council’s: a loading-bay slot booked by the facilities team, vehicle registrations sent in advance, and whatever escort or pass arrangements the landlord sets. We send the crew names and the van details as early as the building manager wants them, and we work evenings or weekends so desks are back in use for the next shift.

The other airport job is the household leaving the country. When a family in Harmondsworth or Sipson is relocating abroad, our international removals service packs and inventories the house and hands the consignment to the shipper. Our comparison of sea freight against air freight for a household sets out when flying a few boxes ahead of the main shipment is worth the cost, and our storage service can hold anything that is not going while you settle in.