What is Kings Langley like?

Kings Langley is a village on the old main road between Watford and Hemel Hempstead, with the Grand Union Canal and the railway on its eastern edge and the hill rising to the west, where a royal palace once stood and gave the village its name. The High Street is the spine: a mix of timber-framed and brick houses, Victorian cottages and shops with flats above, some of the older buildings listed and the centre a conservation area. Behind and above it, the village is mostly twentieth century: 1930s semis along the roads up the hill, council-built houses of the post-war years, and private closes and cul-de-sacs added through the 1960s and later. Kings Langley is in Dacorum, and Dacorum Borough Council handles parking matters in the village.

What does the village layout mean for a lorry?

The High Street carries traffic through the village and has parking along much of its length, so a lorry outside a High Street cottage sits in a live road with cars passing close. The firm may ask for a bay suspension or choose to stop in a side road and carry. Several of the older houses are reached through a passage between buildings or from a lane at the back, and the doorways and stairs in a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century house are smaller than a modern wardrobe assumes. Mention a low ceiling, a winding stair or a door you have to duck under.

On the hill, the roads are steeper and some of the closes end in a turning head that a long vehicle cannot use. A drive on a slope with a garage below the house is common. Say whether the lorry can reach the front door or has to stop lower down.

What about the old Ovaltine works?

The factory beside the canal that made Ovaltine for most of the last century closed in the early 2000s, and its pale frontage was kept and turned into flats, with newer blocks built around it. These are managed flats with lifts, fobs and allocated parking, and the usual questions apply: can the lift be booked or protected, is there a loading area, and does the car park have a height barrier that keeps a lorry out. Some of the flats look over the canal and have no vehicle access on that side at all.

Are the outlying places part of WD4?

The WD4 district runs beyond the village to Chipperfield, on the high ground to the west, and to Hunton Bridge on the Watford side. Chipperfield is a common-side village with cottages around the green, farmhouses and larger houses on lanes, and some of its homes are down tracks that a lorry will not take. Hunton Bridge sits by the canal and the old main road, with a mix of cottages and later houses. If your address is in one of these, say which, because the access, and in some cases the council, differ from the village itself.

Is the motorway junction a help or a nuisance?

Kings Langley sits just off the M25 at junction 20 and beside the A41, which makes it easy for a lorry to reach from anywhere in West Herts or further afield. On the day it also means the roads through the village can be busy when the motorway is, and a firm may plan the loading around that. That is their decision, not something this site can arrange.

What is different about the older cottages?

A cottage that has stood on the High Street for three hundred years was built for people with far less furniture than we own now. Rooms are small, ceilings are low, stairs are steep and sometimes boxed in behind a door, and the back garden may only be reached through the house. Wardrobes often have to be taken apart, mattresses bent round the stair, and anything long carried in through a window. A firm that knows the village will have met all of this before, but they need to hear about it first.

What should a Kings Langley enquiry include?

whether the home is on the High Street, up the hill, in the canal-side flats or in one of the outlying villages
the age of the house and anything narrow or low in it
where a lorry can stop, and for how long
the floor and the lift, if it is a flat
your WD4 postcode and the date you have in mind

If you agree, one local removals firm that covers WD4 receives the enquiry, if one does. We check whether anyone does; we cannot promise it.

Who you will hear from

We pass your enquiry to one local removals firm, if one covers your postcode. It is never sent to a list of companies. If nobody covers your postcode, we will tell you and will not pass your details on.