Removals in Lee SE12

Removals Lee: the homes on the Baring estate and around it

For centuries Lee was a scattered village rather than a single centre. One cluster of houses stood at Lee Green, at the north end of what was then Burnt Ash Lane, and another stood on Old Road, which in the 1740s was part of the road from Lewisham to Eltham. By 1829 that traffic had been moved onto a new road a little further north, and Old Road became the quiet back street it still is, behind the busier Lee High Road. The Manor House on Old Road was built in 1771 and 1772 and bought in 1792 by Sir Francis Baring, founder of the bank. His family, later the Barons Northbrook, owned the fields to the south, and when the Dartford loop line opened a station at Lee in 1856 they began to turn those fields into streets for City workers.

The building ran from the 1860s to around 1916, in batches, so a single street can change character from one end to the other. Lewisham's character appraisal of the Lee Manor conservation area, adopted in March 2008, describes the estate street by street, and it matches what we find behind the front doors. The street names still record the family's other estates: Micheldever, Wantage and Taunton. These are the kinds of home we are asked to move most often in Lee, and what each one changes on the day.

Brightfield Road, Lampmead Road and Hedgley Street

Brightfield Road is the oldest planned street on the estate. It appears on the 1870 Ordnance Survey map as Robertson Street, and its eastern end is two facing terraces of small yellow-brick houses: a door and a window at street level, two windows above, a very small front garden and a small plot behind. Further west the houses gain bay windows, and where the road curls round in a U to meet Lampmead Road the houses are later again, with larger front gardens. Hedgley Street, just south, has plain bay-fronted houses with only a strip of garden in front.

These streets are narrower than the rest of the estate and feel like back streets, which they are. A small terrace like this usually means a straight, steep stair and a front room opening off a narrow hall, so we ask about the largest wardrobe, the sofa and any bed with a solid headboard before the day. Our notes on what happens when furniture is wider than the doorway explain the options when a piece came in through a window or was built in the room.

Burnt Ash Road: steps up, basements below

The earliest building on the estate started at the north end of Burnt Ash Road, and the largest houses are still there. The west side is lined with three-storey houses in yellow stock brick, with a flight of steps up to the front door over a stuccoed basement and a bay window that runs up all three levels. At the north end, four wider two-storey villas from the late 1850s are listed Grade II. One row of three-storey houses is set at a slight angle to the road, so the fronts are staggered rather than in a line.

Some of these houses are now divided into flats, and a house with a raised ground floor and a basement can have a separate flat below. For an upper flat we plan for the outside steps as well as the inside stair; for a lower one, the way in is usually its own set of steps down to the front area. Our guide to moving into or out of a basement flat in London covers the turn at the bottom of those steps, which is where most of the trouble starts. Nearer the station, both sides of Burnt Ash Road have three-storey shopping parades with homes above the shops, which are usually reached by a side door and a long single stair.

Micheldever Road and Handen Road: the big houses

The houses that surprise people are the semi-detached villas at the eastern end of Micheldever Road, built in a French Baroque style with mansard roofs. The 1890s map shows them with empty plots between, which suggests a plan to build the whole street that way was given up; the gaps were filled between 1896 and 1916 with smaller houses in other styles. On Handen Road the eastern end has large town houses with bay windows and return wings, and the western end is later, with red-brick garden walls and gate piers topped with terracotta balls.

A room inside a mansard roof is often a bedroom, reached by a stair that is narrower than the ones below it. These are the moves where we send a larger crew, pack the day before and take beds, wardrobes and desks apart in the room. If you are leaving one of these houses for something smaller, our notes on downsizing into a smaller flat are worth reading before you decide what comes with you.

Southbrook Road, Effingham Road, Manor Lane and Taunton Road

West of the big houses the scale drops. Southbrook Road has double-fronted houses with a bay either side of the door and wide, planted front gardens. Manor Lane, Taunton Road and the west of Effingham Road are mostly terraces on narrow plots: a front door to one side, a bay window of one or two storeys to the other, and a small front garden behind a low wall. Most are still single family houses, although some have been split into flats. The two primary schools on Effingham Road, St Winifred's and Brindishe, sit inside this grid.

Southbrook Road has build-outs and humps to slow the traffic, which is good for the street and means the van has to stand clear of the narrowed sections. On these terraces the questions are the same as anywhere with a bay and a narrow hall: how wide the front door is, whether the stair turns, and whether the van can stand outside or a few doors along.

Flats and newer homes around the edges

Not everything in Lee is Victorian. Bombing in the Second World War left gaps that were filled with post-war buildings, and in the 1960s a large area between Hedgley Road and Effingham Road was cleared for blocks of flats and maisonettes and a secondary school. More recently, the old goods yards round Lee station were built over: new housing north of the station, and Jasmine Court to the south, off Woodyates Road, where the former council depot's buildings were converted into homes and new houses were added around the yard. For a flat in one of the blocks we want the floor, whether there is a lift and where the nearest legal place to stop is, and for Jasmine Court how close the van can get to your door inside the yard.

Lee sits well outside the Congestion Charge zone, and the whole of Greater London is inside the ULEZ, so a move within SE12 pays neither. If your load is heading into central London, our note on how ULEZ and the Congestion Charge apply to a removal van explains how that goes into the price.

Call 020 3983 5199 with the street, the number of floors and what is going, and we will work out a price from that.

Lee removal prices

Use these bands as a guide. The figure we confirm is fixed once the steps, the stair and the parking are known.

Guide figures only. A three-storey Burnt Ash Road house with a basement, or a flat over a shop with a long stair, usually sits towards the top of its band.

Districts around Lee

Each of these neighbours has a page of its own: