Removals in Totteridge

Totteridge removals along the ridge, from the Green to the Common

Totteridge was never really part of the London that grew up around it. The Victoria County History of Hertfordshire describes it as a detached chapelry of Hatfield, ten miles away, held by the Bishops of Ely, and it stayed a Hertfordshire parish until it was taken into the new London Borough of Barnet in 1965. The same account puts the village on a ridge about 400 feet high, with the road from Whetstone to Mill Hill running along the top and the land falling to Dollis Brook in the east. That geography still decides how a move here works: almost everything is on, or just off, one road.

Barnet designated the whole ribbon as a conservation area, and its Totteridge Conservation Area character appraisal, adopted in May 2008, counts about 450 properties along it, set within Green Belt fields on three sides that slope down to Dollis Brook to the north and Folly Brook to the south. It splits the area into five parts: Totteridge Lane, Totteridge Green, Totteridge Village, the later side roads, and Totteridge Common. Each of them gives us a slightly different job.

Totteridge Lane: the 1884–1914 houses

The appraisal notes that the Lane, from the edge of the conservation area to St Andrew’s Church, was barely built on until the late 19th century and then filled between 1884 and 1914. These are large houses set well back from the road in secluded gardens, behind heavy planting, high brick walls and iron or timber gates. Some of the big gardens have since been split and rebuilt, and numbers 140 to 148 now sit on a private road of their own. For us that usually means a long walk from the door to wherever the van can stand, so we measure the drive at the quote and decide whether the Luton goes up it or waits at the gate with the crew shuttling.

The Green and the village cottages

Around Totteridge Green the houses are a mix: listed farmhouses such as Laurel Farm and Home Farm at the southern end, Arts and Crafts houses by T.E. Collcutt, and small cottages like Strathearn Cottages and Beaconsfield Cottages. Further west, in Totteridge Village, there are weatherboarded cottages with clay-tiled roofs and picket fences next to grand listed villas such as Totteridge House and The Priory. A cottage move is a small one by Totteridge standards, but the stairs are often steep and the doorways low, so we bring the smaller van, take beds and wardrobes apart upstairs and carry rather than tip anything through a door frame that has been there for two hundred years.

Pine Grove, Northcliffe Drive and the side roads

Behind the main road sit the inter-war and post-war cul-de-sacs the appraisal groups together: Pine Grove, Northcliffe Drive, Grange Avenue and Priory Close, with large detached houses on deep, narrow plots, plus newer roads such as Badgers Croft. Of everything in N20 these are the closest to an ordinary family move, with a drive, a garage and a loft. The difference is the volume. A five-bedroom detached house with a full garage is usually two Lutons or two loads, and our house moving crews plan it that way from the start rather than discovering it at lunchtime.

Totteridge Common and the houses with outbuildings

West of Grange Avenue the Common is the lowest-density part of all: a scattering of large houses in spacious grounds, a few cottages close to the road, and converted agricultural buildings such as Willow House, the former Denham Farmhouse, and West End House with its timber-framed barn. The appraisal records that many of these houses came with stabling, service buildings and sweeping gravel driveways. In practice a move from the Common is rarely just the house. There is a garden room, a gym in an old coach house, ride-on mowers and garden furniture in a barn, and sometimes a flat over the garage. We list every building on the survey so nothing is left standing in an outhouse when the van pulls away.

Antiques, paintings and listed interiors

The conservation area holds 48 listed buildings and 24 more on Barnet’s local list, and the houses that are not listed are often furnished as if they were. Long-case clocks, framed oils, stone garden statues and inherited dining tables are normal here. We wrap and crate them individually, and our notes on how we move antique furniture and framed art explain what we need from you before the day, including any valuation you want listed on the inventory. In a listed house we also protect the things that cannot move: banisters, stone floors, panelled walls and old door frames.

Leaving after a long time in one house

A lot of people moving out of Totteridge have been in the same house for decades, and the job is less a swap of addresses than a sorting of a whole life. Our packing team can work room by room over several days, and our guide to how many days it takes to pack a large house gives a realistic timetable. What is not going to the new home can go to containerised storage while the family decides, and smaller pieces heading to children elsewhere in London can follow later with our man and van service.

Office removals in Totteridge

The appraisal describes Totteridge as almost exclusively residential, so office removals Totteridge clients ask us for are mostly home offices and small practices run from an outbuilding: desks, filing, a server cabinet and a library of files. We pack and label those separately from the house so they can be set up first at the new address, and for a business with a separate site our commercial moving team can do it at a weekend.