Where on the hill
Wimbledon Village
The top of the hill
The top of the hill, a conservation area, and the part of SW19 that looks least like London. It is also the part where a large van most often cannot get to the door.
The housing Large Victorian and Edwardian houses, Georgian survivals on the High Street, mews conversions and a handful of very large detached properties on the Common side.
What this means for the move
The lanes were not built for a seven-and-a-half-tonne vehicle and several of them still are not. Where a large van cannot turn or cannot stand, the job becomes a shuttle — a smaller vehicle running between the property and a larger one parked somewhere legal — and that has to be priced in from the start rather than discovered on the day.
Conservation area status governs a surprising amount. It does not stop a removal, but it does mean no marking of stonework, no drilling of anything for a hoist, and a great deal more care about where equipment is set down.
These are big houses with big contents, and a great deal of it is old. Period furniture that has stood in the same room for decades does not always survive being moved by somebody in a hurry, and much of it will not come apart the way modern furniture does.
There is usually a garden, and there is usually a great deal in it. Garden furniture, statuary, pots that two people cannot lift and a shed that has never been emptied are all normal here and all routinely left off a survey.
What we do about it
Survey the approach as well as the property, and tell you plainly if a shuttle is needed rather than finding out with the van outside
Bring smaller vehicles where the lane demands it, and quote that as part of the job
Wrap period and antique items to a higher standard as a matter of course, not as an upgrade
Count the garden as a room, because here it usually is one
The constraint here
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.
Get a quote
Moving in or out of The Village?
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.