Removals in Little Venice

Little Venice moves start with which side of the water you are on

The name is younger than the houses. According to the Victoria County History of Middlesex, it came into general use only after the Second World War, for the pool and for the banks of the Regent’s Canal running towards Edgware Road, although Blomfield Road was already being promoted with a Venetian comparison by 1925. The streets themselves are mostly Victorian, and the council’s Maida Vale conservation area leaflet records that a section of Maida Vale and Little Venice was designated in 1968, with more than 350 listed buildings now inside the wider area.

For anyone booking a van, water is the main fact of life here. The Regent’s Canal, cut between 1812 and 1820, puts Maida Avenue on one bank and Blomfield Road on the other. The Paddington Arm then separates Delamere Terrace from the Bristol Gardens side. Two neighbours can wave at each other across the water and still be a drive apart, because the road crossings are few. Warwick Avenue Bridge, a late Victorian iron girder span with ornamental railings and Grade II listing, is the obvious crossing at the pool. Westbourne Terrace Road crosses further west.

So we sort jobs around the pool into six groups. Each has its own likely stair, kerb and vehicle, and a quote that treats them as one will be wrong for most of them.

Blomfield Road: villas facing the Regent’s Canal

Leases for houses here were being granted from 1840, and by 1851 this was one of the few built-up roads north of the water. The county history describes a mixture of detached and semi-detached villas, which is still what you see from across the water. Nos 17 and 18 show the scale of the older ones: a listed mid-Victorian pair in yellow-brown brick with stucco dressings, two storeys over a basement, with a fish-scale tile roof and recessed entrances at the sides.

Two floors sound easy, but the basement changes the sum. A kitchen or family room below street level usually means a separate set of steps, and large items such as range cookers or American fridge freezers need measuring against that route before the day. We walk you through what to photograph, and our guide to taking furniture through a lower-ground entrance explains why the turn at the bottom is the part that decides things. Towards the Edgware Road end, a few plots were rebuilt in plain neo-Georgian brick, and those are often more straightforward.

Inside a listed villa, moulded door cases, stair balusters and fireplaces are protected as well as the front elevation. Our notes on protecting period features in a listed home set out what that means when the sofa is halfway through a doorway. We pad those points first and leave the stairs clear of boxes while the heavy pieces are moving.

Maida Avenue: the south bank

Until 1939 this road was called Maida Hill West, and some of its houses date from the same builders who worked on Blomfield Road. It runs along the southern side of the canal towards Edgware Road, with Park Place Villas and Howley Place behind it. On the zone map it falls in B4, while the opposite bank does not, and that one line changes the suspension price explained further down the page. Customers often give us “Little Venice” as the address, so we always ask for the street as well.

Warwick Crescent and Delamere Terrace: the rebuilt side of the pool

Robert Browning lived at 19 Warwick Crescent from 1862 to 1887, but the house he knew has gone. In the 1950s the London County Council bought up this run of decayed streets for what became the Warwick estate, opened in 1962 and passed to Westminster in 1971. Delamere Terrace and Warwick Crescent were rebuilt as four and five-storey brick ranges of maisonettes and homes for older residents, and the side of Warwick Crescent facing the pool was painted to match the white houses opposite.

A maisonette means an internal staircase on top of whatever brings you to your own front door, so a third-floor home can involve two separate climbs. We ask which floor your door is on and which floor your bedrooms are on. If you are organising this for someone older, our advice on helping a parent leave a long-held home covers the pacing, and we can set the day up to suit.

Estate roads bring a practical catch. Westminster’s online booking system cannot reserve a space on housing estate land, so that application goes in on paper. If your kerb is on the estate rather than the public road, we need to know early.

Blomfield Villas and Westbourne Terrace Road: the Italianate survivors

A short stretch of the old layout came through the clearances. G. L. Taylor took leases on 13 houses in Westbourne Terrace Road in 1847, and William Buddle took leases on 19 more across Blomfield Street (now Villas) and Delamere Terrace in 1851. The county history notes that restoration of these Italianate terraces drew a Civic Trust commendation. Expect tall rooms and staircases that wind tightly near the top. Beauchamp Lodge, the ornate 1854 building on the corner between the pool and Harrow Road, marks the edge of this group.

Randolph Road and Clifton Villas: tall pairs, often now flats

North of Blomfield Road the houses grow. Randolph Road and the south side of Clifton Villas are lined with matching pairs of three storeys and a basement, and Randolph Crescent has linked pairs of four storeys and a basement. When the Church Commissioners sold their Maida Vale estate in the 1980s, companies bought houses for conversion, so many of these are now several flats behind one front door. Top-floor flats share a single hall with everyone below them, and it is safest to assume there is no lift. Measure the big pieces first, then take a look at how a stair-only flat move is organised. The grand avenue that leads up to St Saviour’s has its own Warwick Avenue page.

Moving on or off a boat

Boats are moored along this stretch, including a residential site on the Blomfield Road bank just off the pool. No van reaches a boat, so everything is a hand carry from the road, along whatever path and gate serve your mooring. Doors and hatches on a narrowboat are also far smaller than those in a house. Please measure what is coming aboard and tell us who manages the mooring, because access terms are set by the site rather than by us or the council. We are happy to quote for it, but we will need photos of the route first.