Removals in Fittleworth, West Sussex (RH20)

Your Local Removal Company for Fittleworth and the Rother Valley

Wolves Removals is a family-run West Sussex moving company, fully insured. Fittleworth sits between Pulborough and Petworth, inside the South Downs National Park, in the Chichester District and the RH20 postcodes. It is home ground for us: our base is at Ashington, a short drive east, so we arrive with our own crew and lorry rather than running the job from an office on the doorstep or passing it to a stranger. The village runs to period cottages and country houses down narrow lanes and behind conservation-area frontages, and moves like those are planned to the house itself and its approach, not to a line on a map.

Our comprehensive range of services includes:

• Full house and furniture removals across Fittleworth and the RH20 area, from period cottages down the lanes to the larger country homes around the village.
• Careful packing and unpacking, as much or as little of the house as you would like done for you.
• specialist fine-art handling for the antiques, pictures and fine furniture common in the village’s period homes.
• Piano and heavy-item removal, planned around narrow lanes, old bridges and the tight doorways of older cottages.
• Smaller moves for a single room, a part-load or a downsizing job, run by the same insured crew on a lighter footing.
• Short and long-term secure containerised storage for the gap when a chain is still settling or a completion date slips.

About Fittleworth

Fittleworth is a village and civil parish in the wooded greensand country between Pulborough and Petworth — about four miles west of Pulborough along the A283, and, despite the Pulborough postal address, actually in the Chichester District rather than Horsham. The postcode is RH20. The Western Rother, the river that joins the Arun a little downstream at Stopham, runs along the southern edge of the parish, crossed by the old three-arched Fittleworth Bridge. The whole village sits within the South Downs National Park, though on the wooded sandstone north of the chalk rather than up on the open Downs. The civil parish numbered 978 people at the 2011 Census. House removals are the bulk of what we do here.

For a small place, Fittleworth carries a lot of history. Edward Elgar rented Brinkwells, a cottage just outside the village, from 1917 to 1921 and composed some of his last major works there; John Constable sketched the valley and the mill when he stayed nearby at Petworth House; and The Swan Inn, the old coaching inn on the A283, still keeps the painted panels left by Victorian artists. It is, in other words, the kind of village whose houses tend to hold pictures, instruments and inherited furniture — the things worth moving carefully.

Local knowledge still counts on a move here, and mostly it comes down to getting a lorry to the door. Plenty of Fittleworth homes sit down single-track lanes towards Stopham or Bury, or behind the tight frontages of the Lower Fittleworth conservation cottages, where the approach matters more than the mileage. That is what the survey is for: we look at the lane, the turning room and any weight-limited bridge on the way in, then choose the vehicle to match. Nothing about the access is left to be discovered on moving morning.

What a Fittleworth House Move Costs

We do not give a price down the phone for a Fittleworth move, because the honest figure depends on things you have to see. The first is the house itself and what is in it — a period home full of china, pictures and a piano asks more of a crew than a sparse modern one — and the second is the getting-to-it: a narrow lane or an awkward drive can add a longer carry or mean a smaller van shuttling the load the last stretch. Beyond those two, the price tracks the ordinary things — how big the move is, whether you would like us to handle the packing, and the time of year. We survey the property, by video or in person, and turn all of that into one fixed written price. For a first rough idea from the number of bedrooms, our removals cost calculator is the place to start.

Period and Country Homes Around Fittleworth

Fittleworth is a village of old houses, and they set the terms of a move here more than the distance ever does. Brick-and-flint and sandstone cottages line the lanes, larger country houses stand back in their own grounds, and the listed cottages of the Lower Fittleworth conservation area sit tight to the road. A house lived in for a generation or two fills up with the kind of thing that does not travel in a standard box — framed pictures, a piano, china and furniture handed down — while the rooms themselves were built for smaller pieces than we buy now, so a wardrobe that will not turn on the stair or a doorway an inch too tight is a normal part of the day. Our experienced handling is made for the first of those; a survey that measures the doorways and the stairs takes care of the second.

Moving to Fittleworth

Newcomers to Fittleworth tend to be after exactly what the village looks like from the road: a quiet, wooded corner of the South Downs National Park with some history behind it. A few practicalities are worth knowing before moving day. There is no railway station in the village; the nearest mainline is at Pulborough, about four miles east, with trains to London Victoria in a little over the hour, which is what makes this commuter country. The A283 links the village to Petworth to the north-west and Pulborough to the east, though much of Fittleworth lies off it down narrow lanes. The village keeps a Church of England primary school, the well-known Fittleworth village shop and The Swan Inn on the main road; St Mary’s, the Grade I listed parish church with its medieval tower and an 1871 nave, stands above the Rother.

Fittleworth sits well inside the area we cover from Ashington, and we move families right across the neighbouring villages and towns too: Petworth to the north-west, Pulborough to the east, with Storrington and Billingshurst within easy reach. Between a sale and a purchase, our secure containerised storage holds the whole move until the new place is ready, and anything fragile or inherited travels under our fine-art expertise.

Preparing for Your Fittleworth Move

A Fittleworth move is mostly won at the survey, so a couple of things are worth flagging when we come round. The big one is the approach to the house: if it is down a single-track lane, over a low-weight bridge or up an awkward drive, that decides the vehicle we send. The other is anything that needs taking apart — beds, wardrobes and flat-pack are dismantled and rebuilt by the crew, so there is nothing for you to unbuild the night before.

How much you take on yourself is your call. Hand over the full packing service for the whole house, or keep the ordinary boxes and let us wrap only the fragile things, the pictures, glass and china that fill an older home here. Should the sale and the purchase fall on different days, containerised storage bridges the gap; a single room or a small flat is better suited to the lighter smaller-moves service. And if a completion date is still wobbling, tell us at the outset; building the plan around a date that might move costs far less effort than tearing it up at the eleventh hour.