From the cobbled Market Square and the antique-dealer rows of Lombard Street to the Capability Brown deer-park villages of Tillington and Byworth, and out to the South Downs farmhouses around Sutton and Bignor — parquet, hardwood and full restorations by a family team who’ll happily make the run up from the coast.
40 minutes from our Bognor Regis workshop · Covering GU28
Petworth is the antique capital of the South Downs — forty minutes north of the Bognor workshop, half an hour east of Midhurst, with a cobbled Market Square, a 17th-century baroque mansion sat behind a thirteen-foot stone wall, and a working high street where roughly one in three shopfronts is still a proper dealer’s window full of Georgian mahogany and Regency silver. The architecture follows suit: stone-built mediaeval cottages thread along Lombard Street and Pound Street, Tudor and Jacobean townhouses sit shoulder-to-shoulder around the Square and East Street, the Georgian and Regency wing-houses line the approach down North Street, and Petworth House itself sweeps out into Capability Brown’s seven-hundred-acre deer park behind the wall. We’ve lifted plenty of original elm and pine board in the timber-framed cottages off Lombard Street, hand-buffed parquet back from a century of antique-trade footfall in the bigger Georgian properties around the Square, and laid wide-plank oak through the larger estate-edge houses up by Hampers Common.
Further out toward Tillington, Byworth, Lodsworth, Fittleworth, Sutton and Bignor the work shifts toward farmhouse and converted-barn jobs in proper Petworth-estate and South Downs National Park country — herringbone re-laid across open-plan flint-and-brick kitchen-diners, walnut feature rooms in former dairy buildings, and brushed engineered oak through long flagstone hallways in estate-cottage smallholdings. The drive up the A285 is one of the better runs in the patch, the Square on a Saturday is worth catching for the dealer windows alone, and the standard never changes — same hand, same patience, same respect for the building you’re working in.
Petworth’s housing stock is unusually layered for a town of its size — you’ll go from a Tudor jettied cottage on Lombard Street to a Georgian dealer’s townhouse on the Square to a Petworth-estate ochre cottage in Tillington to a 1930s farmhouse out beyond Sutton inside the same square mile — and the wood-floor brief shifts with each property. The mediaeval and Tudor stock around Lombard Street, Pound Street and East Street typically has thin, irregular original elm or pine boards over hand-cut joists with very little void clearance, and we always survey by lifting a discreet board before quoting; we lean toward gentle gap-filling with traditional slivers and a satin hardwax-oil finish so the floor reads as original to anyone who isn’t looking at it with a torch.
The Petworth-estate cottages around Tillington, Byworth and Lodsworth come with their own gentle constraint — the estate has a quiet view on changes to exterior fabric and the painted joinery, but interior wood-floor work is the homeowner’s call entirely; we just keep the install tidy and respectful of the building.
For the bigger South Downs farmhouses and barn conversions out toward Sutton, Bignor and Fittleworth we’ll run a moisture-meter pass over every subfloor (underfloor heating and inglenook hearths included), acclimatise the boards on-site first where we’re laying solid wood — engineered cores are stable enough to skip that wait — and bring sample boards in oak, walnut and reclaimed pine so the species can be matched to the room before a single block is cut.
We restore and lay floors across Petworth and the estate villages — wide-plank oak for a Georgian townhouse, character-grade boards for an estate-cottage kitchen. The work we'd bring to your home.
The kind of wide-plank floor we’d lay in a Petworth home — honey-toned natural oak in long boards run the length of a dining room, character grade with knots and open graining left honest under a low-sheen oil that catches the light across the timber.
The kind of plank floor we’d lay in a Petworth home — light honey oak run in clean boards around a central wood-burner, gentle knot and grain showing through a soft satin finish that keeps the room bright and warm underfoot.
The kind of staircase we’d build in a Petworth home — pale natural oak treads rising clean against a glass and timber balustrade, the open grain kept light under a matt finish so the stair reads soft and modern through the hall.
The kind of aged floor we’d lay in a Petworth home — wide boards in a weathered grey-brown tone with heavy saw and wire-brush texture, the deep graining left raw under a low-sheen oil so every plank reads worn and full of character.
Mediaeval cottages on Lombard Street and estate villages toward Tillington reward patient restoration — period oak, parquet and new floors across Petworth and GU28.
Sanding, gap-filling, hand-finishing — tired boards brought back without losing the character.
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Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian houses — pitch pine, baltic deal, oak, sympathetic finishes.
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Herringbone, chevron and Versailles panels — modern installs and period restoration.
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Country estate programmes phased around residence — restoration and new install under one spec.
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Solid oak, walnut, ash and maple boards — character grades and feature widths.
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Real-wood top layers on stable cores — engineered for UFH and open-plan rooms.
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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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Grade I, II* and II floors — sympathetic species, reversible methods advised where a listing demands.
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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 Petworth is anchored by the GU28 postcode — Mediaeval cottages threading Lombard Street & Pound Street all sit squarely inside it. Around 40 minutes up from the Bognor Regis workshop — same craftsman every visit, flat-rate quotes by the job not the mile.
Across GU28 the Petworth 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 South Downs farmhouses out toward Sutton, Bignor & Fittleworth 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 3.5k residents in the town centre, and we’ve quoted on hundreds of the homes within walking distance of it.
“We had a wood block floor in poor condition. Darren and his team carried out repairs to the floor and then sanded and sealed so that it now looks like a new floor. It is so refreshing to find a contractor who responds to your initial enquiry, comes out and gives a quote and then carries out the work to a high standard. Would definitely recommend.”
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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.
