Removals in Highbury N5

House removals Highbury: the Fields, the villas and the estate

Most of Highbury went up between 1774 and the 1890s, and the order it was built in still decides how a removal works. According to the Victoria County History account of Highbury, the 39 houses of Highbury Place were leased between 1774 and 1779, the middle of Highbury Terrace carries the date 1789, and Highbury Crescent was laid out in 1844 as pairs of large stuccoed Italianate villas. Highbury New Park followed from 1851, a wide curving road of detached and semi-detached villas, and Aberdeen Park was laid out at the same time as a private road off Highbury Grove. The gaps were filled with terraces in the 1870s and 1880s, and Highbury Fields itself, about 25 acres, was bought as a public park in 1885.

The terraces facing Highbury Fields

The houses on Highbury Place, Highbury Terrace and Highbury Crescent mostly stand over a basement, with rooms below pavement level and the front door at the top of a flight of steps. Islington's design guidelines for the Highbury Fields conservation area say most houses there have front basement areas behind cast-iron railings, and the council will not normally allow those areas to be covered over or the front steps to be widened. For a removal that means two routes out of the house rather than one: the main rooms come down the internal stairs and out over the steps, and the lower floor often has its own narrow stair up from the area to the pavement. We plan the carry for each route separately and decide which furniture goes which way before the day.

Inside, the stair is the limit. In a tall terrace house the stair usually turns at each half-landing, and a large sofa or a solid wardrobe that went in through the front door forty years ago may only come out with its feet and doors off. We ask for photographs of the turns and a measurement of the widest pieces, and we bring the tools to take beds and wardrobes apart in the room rather than on the landing.

Victorian villas divided into flats

The villas on Highbury Hill, Aubert Park and Highbury New Park were built for single families with servants. The county history notes that by 1930 most of the houses in Highbury New Park and Highbury Hill had been divided up or taken over by schools and institutions, and it describes one house in the road in 1936 holding several flats and bedsits across three floors. By the early 1980s, the same history says, the villas left on Highbury Hill were mostly divided into flats, as elsewhere in Highbury. A villa flat may be a garden flat, a raised ground floor over the front steps, or one of the floors above on the original staircase. Moving out of the top flat of a villa is a long carry on a shared stair, and we keep the hall and landings clear for the neighbours while it happens.

Along Highbury New Park, Islington's guidelines single out the rendered front walls, gate piers and wooden gates of the villas as features to keep, and they protect the side gaps between houses. In practice the gate is the pinch point. A pair of narrow gates between piers decides whether a dining table goes through upright or on its side, so the width of the gate is one of the first things we ask for.

Mansion blocks and council estates

Not every Highbury home is old. Addington Mansions, built in 1922 on the site of villas in Highbury Park and renamed Taverner Square and Peckitt Square in 1982, are blocks of flats four storeys high. The London County Council's Quadrant estate, opened in 1954 between the arms of Highbury Quadrant and Green Lanes, has 611 homes in 40 blocks of four and five storeys, and Aubert Court replaced the bombed college buildings with another 100 homes. On these estates the parking is estate land, not the public road, so Islington's ordinary rules for moving vans do not apply: the council sends people moving to or from an estate to Housing Services for a temporary estate parking permit, and we ask you to request it as soon as the date is fixed.

Highbury is outside the Congestion Charge zone, and the whole of Greater London sits inside the ULEZ. Both rules, and what they add to a quote that crosses into the centre, are set out in our note on ULEZ and Congestion Charge costs for removal vans.

Call 020 3983 5199 with the street and the floor, and we will price the move from that.

Highbury removals: guide prices

Each figure below is a starting point; the price we confirm is fixed once we know the stairs and the parking.

Guide figures only. A top-floor villa flat or a house with a basement flat below usually sits towards the upper end of its band because of the extra carrying.

Next-door areas with their own pages

Highbury borders these areas, each with its own page: