Local & Reliable Skip Hire in St Austell.

Local area guide

Skip hire in St Austell

St Austell is the largest town in Cornwall, sitting a couple of miles inland from St Austell Bay on the south coast, with a population of around 27,000. It grew from a small village into a substantial town on the back of the china clay industry, after William Cookworthy identified kaolin deposits on the moors above the town in 1746. China clay became Cornwall's most valuable export, shipped out through Charlestown and later Par, and the industry still operates today. The white spoil tips left by two and a half centuries of extraction gave the landscape north of the town its nickname, the Cornish Alps.

The area's best-known attraction is the Eden Project, opened in 2001 in a worked-out clay pit at Bodelva, where vast biome domes house rainforest and Mediterranean environments — one of the most visited paid attractions in the UK. Nearby Charlestown is a preserved Georgian clay port with tall ships often moored in the harbour, familiar from Poldark and many other productions. The Wheal Martyn museum records the clay industry, and the town also has the Holy Trinity Church with its fine sixteenth-century tower, along with the White River Place shopping area in the centre.

St Austell sits on the A390 with the A30 a short distance north, and St Austell station is on the Cornish Main Line with services to Plymouth, Exeter and London Paddington and west to Truro and Penzance. Newquay Airport is around 15 miles away. The town takes in Mount Charles, Boscoppa, Trewoon, Bethel and Carclaze, with Charlestown, Carlyon Bay, Par, Fowey, Mevagissey and Pentewan among the surrounding coastal villages.

Housing in St Austell ranges from Victorian and Edwardian granite and stone property in the town centre and Mount Charles to interwar and post-war housing across Boscoppa and Bethel, extensive council-built estates, and modern development on the edges of the town. Property is more affordable than much of coastal Cornwall, which supports an active renovation and buy-to-let market, while the surrounding coast at Charlestown, Carlyon Bay, Mevagissey and Fowey has a very substantial holiday-let and second-home sector that generates constant refurbishment work between seasons.

That combination of general renovation and holiday-let refurbishment keeps skip hire in St Austell in steady demand, whether it's a full house refurbishment in Mount Charles, a rear extension in Boscoppa, a garden clearance in Trewoon, a holiday cottage refit at Charlestown or Mevagissey, or a unit strip-out on one of the industrial estates at Holmbush or Par Moor. Skips are available in a range of sizes to suit everything from a small domestic clear-out to a large building project, and while much of the suburban and modern housing has driveways where a skip can be placed without a permit, the older streets in the town centre and the narrow lanes of the coastal villages rely on on-street parking, so a permit from Cornwall Council will be needed where the skip has to sit on the road — and access is worth checking in the tighter village lanes. Booking a few days ahead helps secure the right size and allows time for any permit.