Removals in Shoreditch, from warehouse offices to flats over the High Street

Office removals Shoreditch: what the old furniture-trade buildings mean on move day

Hackney’s South Shoreditch conservation area covers much of the ground between Old Street, Shoreditch High Street and Worship Street. The council’s 2021 appraisal describes three kinds of building there, and each one moves differently. On Great Eastern Street the old showroom-warehouses are four and five storeys, with plaster and stone decoration. On Curtain Road they are slightly plainer and smaller. On Leonard, Luke, Scrutton and Paul Streets they are plain brick warehouses and workshops. Warehouse floors were built high for stock and workbenches, so a fourth floor here is a longer climb than in a house, and we count flights of stairs, not floors, when we set the crew.

Some of the details on the front of these buildings tell you how goods used to arrive. 98 Curtain Road is a narrow five-storey warehouse from 1833 with its taking-in doors still in place. Victoria House on Leonard Circus keeps an iron crane beside its loading doors, and 124–130 Tabernacle Street still has a large wrought-iron wall crane. None of these is used for moves today: everything goes down the main stair or in a lift.

Much of the office space is in a building type the appraisal calls the “flatted factory”. These went up after the war, where bombs had cleared sites, and were built for the furniture trade. They are usually three or four storeys, with a different company on each floor sharing one entrance, one stair, lifts for people, and a loading bay and goods lift for materials. That layout suits an office move: there is a goods lift and a loading point. But they are shared, so the building manager decides when we can use them. For office removals in these buildings we agree a lift slot in writing, usually an evening or a weekend, and plan the order floor by floor. Desks, screens and comms cabinets go with our IT relocation crew, labelled to the new floor plan. Our office move planning guide sets out the timetable we work back from, starting with the lease dates.

The streets matter as much as the buildings. The appraisal describes “straight and narrow streets” between tall, shallow-fronted buildings, with Old Street, Great Eastern Street and Curtain Road as the wider roads that carry the heavy traffic. Charlotte Road and Rivington Street have been repaved, with bollards at the junction. On Charlotte Road a parked Luton leaves little room to pass, so on the narrow streets we want a suspended bay right outside the door, not a loading stop round the corner. On Holywell Row the buildings are only two or three storeys, on narrow late-Georgian plots. Doors and stairs there are narrow too, so we ask for photos of the stair before quoting a sofa or a boardroom table. Our notes on furniture that won’t fit through the door cover what we do when it doesn’t.

House removals Shoreditch: lofts, flats over shops and the Redchurch Street terraces

People live in Shoreditch in three main kinds of home. The first is a loft in a converted warehouse or workshop: open plan, with a big sofa and a bed on a mezzanine, sometimes with a shared goods lift and sometimes with only the old stair. For house removals from a loft we price by volume and by the stair, not by bedrooms, because a one-bed loft can hold more than a three-bed flat.

The second is a flat above a shop. The appraisal’s Shoreditch High Street character area takes in the parade on the west side of the High Street from Old Street up to Bateman’s Row, a run of shops, banks and former furniture showrooms with rooms above. The front door is often a narrow street door beside the shop, with a steep straight stair behind it. The High Street is a red route, so loading has to be planned (see the parking section below). Our guide to moving out of a flat above a shop covers the stair and the timing.

The third is on the Tower Hamlets side. Redchurch Street is one of the oldest roads here: it ran from Boundary Street in Shoreditch out to Bethnal Green, and Boundary Street marked the line between the two parishes. Tower Hamlets made it a conservation area in 2008 to protect that old street pattern, and its appraisal notes the narrow width and the three- and four-storey buildings. The north side has a two-storey terrace from the early or mid 19th century and a three-storey terrace with shopfronts from the late 19th century. Ebor Street, Chance Street and Club Row run off it. North of Old Nichol Street is the Boundary Estate around Arnold Circus, which our Bethnal Green page covers. Here the job is usually a flat removal from an upper floor with a narrow stair, on a street too tight for anything bigger than a Luton.

There are also newer blocks, mostly towards Old Street and the City fringe, with concierge desks and booked goods lifts. Their rules come from the managing agent, and our checklist for moving into a managed block of flats lists what to ask them early.

All of Shoreditch is inside the ULEZ, and our vans meet the standard, so it never appears on your quote. The Congestion Charge is different, because the zone’s edge runs through the area. Our note on ULEZ and the Congestion Charge for removal vans explains how the charge is added when a move does cross into the zone.

Shoreditch removals price guide

Typical fixed prices for a move from a Shoreditch address, before any council fee or Congestion Charge:

Indicative prices only. Where a bay has to be suspended, the council fee depends on the borough. In Hackney it is £100 admin plus £44 per bay per day, with the bay charge waived on up to three bays for the first day of a home move. In Tower Hamlets it is a £200 application fee plus £90 per bay per day, with no bay charge for a house move on up to two bays for one day. These are the fees at the time of writing; the fixed price includes them.

Places around Shoreditch with their own page

North to Hoxton and Haggerston, east to Bethnal Green, south into the City, each of these has its own page: