House Removals in Chester-le-Street

Two rooms of furniture going from one Waldridge Road bungalow to another round the corner, ground floor at both ends, nobody waiting on a completion. That job does not need a crew of ours. Book a self-drive van, pick a Wednesday, get two people who owe you a favour. A lot of the moving here is that shape.

The one that needs us looks different. A flat above the shops at the north end of Front Street, where car traffic is banned. Or a three-bed at Chester Meadows with the keys landing at four and a chain behind you.

Great House Move works out of Durham, six miles down the A167, and has done since 2008. Our own employed crew, a written quote agreed before the day, and nothing added afterwards.

The burn under the Market Place, and what it did to the town centre

The awkward thing about vans here is a river you cannot see. The Cong Burn was sealed into a concrete culvert in the 1930s and the Market Place was built on top. On 28 June 2012 it could not take the rain, and more than 100 homes and businesses at the north end went under: Front Street, the Market Place, Cone Terrace, Hopgarth. The £6.2m answer reopened around 90 metres of the burn, put flood walls in and moved the market stalls out onto Front Street. It ran from January 2019, was signed off in March 2021, and better protects 72 homes. Old directions for the bottom of town will not match what is there now.

Front Street's northern end is closed to cars. Buses, cycles and delivery vehicles get through. Whether a 3.5-tonne Luton counts as a delivery vehicle on a given morning is not something we will guess at, so we ring the Parking Shop and ask. Any suspension goes in when your date firms up, not the night before. The town centre is also one of the county's six Controlled Parking Areas. A resident permit is £40 a year, a book of five daily visitor scratchcards is £4, and both cover a car in a bay rather than a van across two.

Then the chares. Church Chare, Low Chare and Middle Chare run off Front Street across the Roman fort at Concangis. Worth an hour with a guidebook. No help at all to a driver, so we park where it is legal and we carry.

Which day you pick, and what the day costs

Market days are Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, and Friday and Saturday are the busy ones now the stalls stand on Front Street itself. How permanent that is, nobody has told us. Those same two days carry our peak uplift on labour, along with month-end. A Wednesday is quieter in town and cheaper on the invoice. If your solicitor gives you any say in the date, spend it there.

The other thing to watch is cricket. The Riverside has held international fixtures since 1999, and on a big one the event parking and shuttles take over the approach roads east of town. The ground and Riverside Park both sit on the Wear floodplain, which is why there is so much flat open ground there to fill with cars.

A local three-bedroom move is £550, fixed, agreed in writing before anything is lifted. Hourly work, the other sizes, packing, pianos and the peak percentages sit on the full Great House Move price list. There is no Chester-le-Street rate. Blankets and straps come with the van, and booking online puts a 30% deposit against the final bill.

Bungalows, pit rows and eighty houses on Burnlands Way

A town of 23,555 at the last census. Three completely different removal jobs inside it.

Around Waldridge Road and Holmlands Park it is 1930s semis and a great many bungalows. That is what drives the local downsizing market, and it takes the stair charge out of a lot of jobs here.

West and north-west, at Pelton, Pelton Fell and Waldridge village, you are into the colliery rows. Long terraces, narrow frontages, steep front paths, and doorways that will not take a modern three-seater with its feet still on. The rear lanes read like the sensible side to load from. Often they are not, so we look before quoting and shuttle with a smaller van where the lane will not take the Luton.

The new estates are the opposite. Chester Meadows on Burnlands Way at Pelton Fell is eighty houses; Hedworths Green is a hundred and forty-five on the Lambton estate, the old seat of the Earls of Durham. Wide doors, level thresholds, nothing much to dismantle. The catch is the close: block paving, cars down both sides, and no room to bring a loaded van round at the far end. So we reverse in on arrival and load facing out.

Getting a van to your door in Chester-le-Street

• Front Street, north of the Market PlaceCar traffic is banned and the stretch is signed for buses, cycles and delivery vehicles, with the market stalls now standing on the street itself. A van at the door means a suspension applied for in advance, or a load from the nearest legal point and a walk.
• Church Chare, Low Chare and Middle ChareNarrow lanes off Front Street running across the Roman fort site, with nowhere to swing a 3.5-tonne van or set a tail lift down. The load comes out to the van rather than the van going in to the load.
• The town-centre Controlled Parking AreaPermit bays where a £40 resident permit or a £4 book of visitor scratchcards covers a car and not a Luton across two spaces. Durham County Council will suspend the restriction for a removal where the application is in ahead of the day.
• Burnlands Way, Pelton FellAn eighty-house estate with block-paved drives and cars down both sides, and no room to bring a loaded van round at the far end, so we reverse in on arrival and load facing out.

Getting in and out of Chester-le-Street

Junction 63 of the A1(M) at Blind Lane feeds the A167, A183 and A693, so a loaded van gets away without going near Front Street. Leeds is roughly 90 miles down the motorway and London about 280. Long runs are one figure with the fuel inside it, agreed before we set off; the long-distance bands sit on the price list. Same crew at both ends. Give us both postcodes on 0191 743 2754.

Questions people in Chester-le-Street ask

Also covered near Chester-le-Street

• Waldridge
• Pelton
• Great Lumley
• Birtley

Other towns we move every week: Removals in Durham · Removals in Newcastle · Removals in Sunderland · Removals in Gateshead · Removals in Middlesbrough · Removals in Darlington

Every town we cover and the long-distance routes are on the areas we cover page, and every figure is published on our prices page.