The two Wimbledons
Same name, same station, different job
They share a name, a postcode district and a station, and almost nothing else. A firm that quotes SW19 as one place is quoting one of these two properly and the other badly.
It is a genuinely unusual piece of London. Most suburbs are one thing, more or less, with better and worse streets in it. Wimbledon is two distinct settlements that grew separately, ended up with the same name, and still have the hill between them doing what it has always done.
Up the top there is a village high street, a conservation area, the Common, and houses whose defining feature for a removals firm is that you frequently cannot get a vehicle anywhere near them. Down the bottom there is a station, a shopping centre, blocks of flats and a controlled parking zone, where you can usually get close but only if somebody has said yes first.
Those are two different problems. A firm that quotes SW19 as a single place is solving one of them properly and the other badly, and you will find out which on the day.
What actually differs
| What differs | Up the hill | Down the hill |
|---|---|---|
| The constraint | Getting a vehicle anywhere near the door | Getting permission from the council and the block |
| The housing | Large period houses, mews conversions, gardens full of things | Blocks, converted terraces, purpose-built flats near the station |
| What defeats furniture | The lane, the gate and the gravel | The turn on the half-landing and the lift that is too small |
| What gets under-surveyed | The garden, the outbuildings and the cellar | The communal route, and how far the van actually has to stand |
| Who has to agree | Usually nobody but you | The council, the managing agent and frequently the neighbours |
The common case
A great many moves cross the hill
Downsizing out of the Village into a flat near the station. Moving up from a converted terrace into a family house on the Ridgway. Both directions are ordinary here, and both mean two different constraints on the same move.
That is the job we are actually built for. It means surveying both ends properly rather than one, sorting the bay suspension and the managing agent at the bottom while planning the shuttle at the top, and sequencing the day so neither end is left waiting on the other.
It also means being honest about which end sets the timetable, which is almost always the one with somebody else’s permission attached to it.
The four positions in full
- Wimbledon Village Access, not volume. A Village house frequently has more room inside it than the road outside has, and everything about the day follows from that.
- The Ridgway and the Common edge Carrying distance. Everything here is further from the road than it looks, and pricing that honestly at the survey is the whole trick.
- Wimbledon Town Permission. Almost everything here depends on somebody else saying yes — the council, the managing agent, the neighbours — and all of it takes arranging in advance.
- The Park and Southfields side The calendar. This is the only part of the hill where the time of year materially changes what is possible, and it is worth checking before you fix a date.
Get a quote
Tell us which end of the hill you are on
The Village, the Ridgway and Common edge, the Town, or the Park and Southfields side. That answer tells us what the constraint is, and the constraint is what the quote is really about.