From Saxon flint cottages around Holy Trinity Church to sailing-quarter homes above Shore Road — bespoke hardwood, sympathetic restoration and skilled parquet by a family team who understand coastal stock.
25 minutes from our Bognor Regis workshop · Covering PO18
Bosham — pronounced "Bozzum" by anyone who's lived here a winter — is twenty-five minutes from our Bognor Regis workshop, and it's one of the villages we know best inside the harbour. Most of our restoration work here lands inside the older stock around Holy Trinity Church: original boards lifted, gap-filled traditionally and finished with hardwax oils that handle the humidity swings the inlet brings in twice a day.
Out toward Bosham Hoe and the houses set back from Shore Road, the work shifts toward installation: engineered oak in kitchen extensions, wide-plank rooms in the larger sailing-quarter homes, and the occasional parquet revival in a 1930s villa. Different houses, same standard — and the same coastal-savvy approach to subfloor moisture every time.
Bosham sits on a tidal inlet of Chichester Harbour — Shore Road floods on the spring tides twice a day, and salt humidity swings hard between summer and winter. That's brutal on board flooring if it isn't handled properly.
We lean toward engineered cores in anything within a quarter-mile of the water — they take humidity in their stride and don't need acclimatising — run a moisture-meter pass over every subfloor before quoting, and where we do lay solid wood we acclimatise the boards on-site first.
For period stock around the church and quay we always survey the void below the boards: ventilation, joist condition, moisture readings. Hardwax oils get the nod over lacquers here too — easier to spot-repair when a stray sailing boot scuffs the hall.
We lay and restore oak floors around Bosham and the Quay — the kind of work we'd specify for a cottage or sailing house by the water. A look at what we'd bring to your home.
The kind of wide-board floor we’d lay in a Bosham kitchen-diner — rustic-grade oak in a warm honey tone, run in long boards from the doorway through to the range and finished in a low-sheen oil that lets the knots and graining show.
How we’d floor a smart Bosham cloakroom — rich walnut-toned boards in a deep warm brown, laid tight under a pedestal basin and wall-hung WC and finished in a soft satin that brings out the grain against the dark walls.
The kind of restoration we’d take on in a panelled Bosham room — original oak herringbone parquet cleaned up and re-finished, the blocks reading in mixed mid-brown tones under a satin sheen that picks up the light from the hearth.
The kind of statement stair we’d build into a contemporary Bosham home — a curving flight in warm walnut-toned timber set against a glass balustrade, carried onto a matching walnut plank floor across the landing above.
Waterside homes around Holy Trinity and Bosham Hoe move with the tides and the damp — we fit and restore floors that can take it, across Bosham and PO18, just as we have since 1997.
Sanding, gap-filling, hand-finishing — tired boards brought back without losing the character.
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Solid oak, walnut, ash and maple boards — character grades and feature widths.
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Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian houses — pitch pine, baltic deal, oak, sympathetic finishes.
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Grade I, II* and II floors — sympathetic species, reversible methods advised where a listing demands.
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Real-wood top layers on stable cores — engineered for UFH and open-plan rooms.
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Herringbone, chevron and Versailles panels — modern installs and period restoration.
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Foyers, offices, retail and hospitality — traditional methods, delivered on schedule.
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Overnight and weekend phasing — slip-rated matt finishes and food-safe sealers.
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Reclaimed boards and beer-tolerant finishes for country pubs, coaching inns and gastropubs.
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Multi-room timber phased around occupancy — batch-matched corridor-to-bedroom, acoustic underlay.
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Country estate programmes phased around residence — restoration and new install under one spec.
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Engineered oak properly specced for wet and electric UFH — written commissioning log on handover.
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French oak, English elm, antique pitch pine — sourced with provenance, laid with respect to age.
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European white oak in 180mm–300mm+ planks, random lengths to 2.5m, hand-finished on site.
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Barn weddings, country-house venues and marquee dance floors — Bona commercial-wear lacquer, seasonal install windows.
Read moreOur work in Bosham is anchored by the PO18 postcode — Saxon-era flint cottages around Holy Trinity Church all sit squarely inside it. Around 25 minutes up from the Bognor Regis workshop — same craftsman every visit, flat-rate quotes by the job not the mile.
Across PO18 the Bosham brief stays the same: Darren surveys on-site, sample boards stay with you for a fortnight under your own lighting, and the install runs in a single solid stretch rather than back-and-forth day trips. It matters in places like Sailing-quarter properties above Shore Road and around Bosham Hoe where the subfloors and the building fabric earn a slower pass. Family team since 1997, working across West Sussex from the same coastal base. Around 2.9k residents in the town centre, and we’ve quoted on hundreds of the homes within walking distance of it.
“Darren and his team have just done a superb job for us. Our oak floor was in poor condition due to heavy use and now looks like new. In addition they did wonderful work on our kitchen table and chairs which were made by Amish workers in the US and had an amazing surface which lasted 20 years but needed replacing. Again they look like new. This is of course dusty work but the team did a great job of limiting this and left the house as they had found it, with all the furniture back in place and even pictures back on the walls. We also used Darren and his team 10 years ago in our last house where they laid a big oak floor. The quality of their work was excellent then and has been again this time. Darren is incredibly knowledgeable about wood flooring and guided us so well on what to do.”
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Every wood flooring pattern, character finish and construction Darren installs — solid hardwood, engineered oak, herringbone and parquet — laid out edge-to-edge so you can see real grain, real colour, real texture.
Darren will visit, measure up and walk you through species, finishes and lead times. No pressure, no hard sell — just specialist advice.
Forrestal Flooring is the trusted flooring partner to award-winning interior design studio LEIVARS. The accolades below were won by LEIVARS for their interior schemes — we're proud to have supplied and fitted the floors behind many of them.
