Removals in Sunbury

Removals Sunbury: one village by the river, one town by the motorway

Sunbury is first recorded in 962, and for most of the next nine centuries it was a village on the north bank of the Thames, grown up round St Mary’s church and the manor house in what is now Sunbury Park. The railway changed that. When the line arrived in 1864, a new settlement spread round the station to the north, first called Upper Sunbury and later Sunbury Common, and the old riverside village became known as Lower Sunbury, or Sunbury-on-Thames. The M3 now cuts across Sunbury Common, and the roundabout at Sunbury Cross sits just under a mile north of the old village.

That history is the most useful thing to know about a move here, because each part gives us a different moving day. Spelthorne’s Lower Sunbury conservation area appraisal, agreed in January 2025, describes the old village street by street, and the borough’s design code describes Sunbury Cross. We use both to plan the access before anyone arrives.

Lower Sunbury: Thames Street, French Street and the walled villas

The oldest part of the village is the triangle where Green Street, Church Street and Thames Street meet, with St Mary’s, rebuilt in 1752, at its point. Pairs and short terraces of two-storey cottages stand close to the road there, mixed with larger houses such as the Old Vicarage. East of the park, the centre of Thames Street tightens: two- and three-storey houses and shops front straight onto the pavement or sit only slightly back, sometimes on both sides, and the road and footway are narrower than anywhere else on the street. Spelthorne’s design code puts Thames Street at about 8 to 10 metres wide with no room for on-street parking, except on The Avenue, which is wider and has its own bays.

For a removal from one of those houses, the van usually cannot stand outside the front door. The plan is to load from The Avenue and carry along the pavement, or to time the job so the van can stop briefly on Thames Street itself. The appraisal also notes the buses and lorries that use the road and the traffic calming along it, so we keep loading short and send an extra person rather than leave the van standing for hours on a narrow bus route.

Along the river, the larger Georgian and Victorian villas sit well back behind high brick walls and gate posts, or close to the road behind dwarf walls and deep porticos. Behind those walls the approach is often a gateway and a drive rather than a front path. French Street, which runs north from the river to Staines Road East, is lined with eighteenth and early nineteenth-century houses, with wide verges and deep front gardens at its southern end and tall brick walls further up. Houses of this age often hold antique furniture, long-case clocks and paintings that want crating rather than a blanket, and our notes on moving antiques and artwork explain how we pack them.

Sunbury Common: the railway streets and the houses since

North of the park, Green Street is the old road up to the station. The Admiral Hawke on it was built in the 1860s as the Railway Arms, in expectation of a station that ended up further north. Around Sunbury station and out towards Kempton Park, housing from the decades after the railway sits alongside the estates added since the 1960s, when the town spread in every direction. Here a move is usually a semi or a terrace with a short front garden, a loft and often a garage, and the questions are how full the loft is and whether there is a drive to load from.

Sunbury Cross: flats above shops and tall blocks

Sunbury Cross is built on a much bigger scale. Spelthorne’s design code describes the centre as lying west of the A308 roundabout and the M3 flyover, along the very wide Staines Road West, with a three-storey terrace on the north-west of the roundabout and tower blocks across most of the rest. Many homes are flats above shops or in the blocks. Staines Road West is a dual carriageway with a road area about 35 metres across, and The Parade runs beside it as a service road for parking and the shops.

For a flat at Sunbury Cross the questions are the lift, the loading point and the distance between them. We ask the managing agent whether the lift can be reserved and protected, and where a van is allowed to wait, before we fix the time. Our guide to moving into or out of a block of flats lists what to ask, and if your flat is above a shop on The Parade, our notes on moving from a flat over a shop cover the rear stair and the shared door.

If you would rather not pack, our packing team can do the kitchen, the books and the loft the day before. If your purchase completes after your sale, we can keep the furniture in a sealed storage room until the keys are released, and for a single sofa or a few boxes between flats our man and van service costs less than a full crew.