Like many obsessions, Robert Walsh’s led to something rather extraordinary: some of the most profoundly beautiful hardwood floors in the world. It all began at the tender age of six, when the founder of UK-based Woodworks began spiriting himself away in his father’s workshop; by the age of eight, he was hanging around construction sites. “From a young age I saw people pulling buildings to bits and trying to put them back together again and I began understanding joinery and wood,” says Walsh. That, combined with his father’s pre-war ethos that forbid wasting anything—old bits of lumber included—and he was forever enchanted. He loved, in particular, pulling nails because it brought him into a close communion with worn floorboards and led him to discover that wood, in fact, had a soul.
“Restoring antique wood is like restoring a painting,” says Walsh. “We honor the shape and wear so It feels like it’s never been touched.” That’s the approach taken with this recently build private chapel in the Scottish Isles, which is defined by a bespoke Woodworks floor made of antique oak that has all the patina and natural undulations that come with hundreds of years of use. With a puzzle-like complexity, it was pieced together by hand with over 3,000 pegs.
Courtesy of WoodworksEven after going off to university to study philosophy, the attraction of old planks had Walsh in a vise grip. And once he discovered that he could make money from his childhood hobby, hanging around construction sites no longer seemed frivolous. “I made 200 quid the first time I resold some old floorboards, which felt like a lot,” says Walsh. “But the grownups got the good stuff, and I got the rubbish.” Walsh had to put real labor into restoring the wood he acquired, while his competitors simply bought and sold the best lots. And that was the key to it all: the realization that there were ways to bring neglected materials back to life and make them not just shine, but speak again. He experimented and taught himself innovative ways to repair while preserving the patina, and devised methods no one had ever tried before for turning wood into floorboards.
Housed on the company’s campus in Cheshire, Woodworks’ vast archive contains numerous rare specimens including ancient Australian jarrah, pine felled centuries ago from a primeval forest, and antique European elm.
Courtesy of WoodworksAnd so Woodworks was born, and in 1993 Walsh began buying up rare and historic wood: from the Old War Office in Whitehall, from defunct vodka distilleries in Poland, from old dock buildings in Liverpool, from 16th-century homes. He poured any money he had into inventory, and over the decades assembled one of the finest archives of antique wood in the world. The treasures hidden in his stockpile include centuries-old French oak, flooring with bomb damage from World War II, and 45-foot-long beams with the original North American logging marks. It’s all carefully cataloged in the 15-acre Woodworks campus in Cheshire, awaiting the perfect project. “Once the rarest woods are gone, that’s it, they’re gone and there won’t be another opportunity to buy them,” says Walsh.
“I worked with Woodworks for over six months to perfect this floor, which I wanted to be quite detailed,” says designer James Thurstan Waterworth of British design firm Thurstan, who created this snug for the 2025 WOW!house in London in collaboration with Hector Finch lighting. Warmth emanates from the antique elm reclaimed from a 16th-century home in Wales.
Martin MorrellAlthough Walsh began working with new wood in 1997 and, in his pioneering way, sparked the craze for wide oak floors (which led to the establishment of his tremendously successful Ted Todd business), he couldn’t let go of his first love. In 2010, he decided to concentrate in earnest on his obsession with creating things that no one else could—whether they be made with antique, reclaimed, or new wood. “We’re explorers with an artistic approach. We’re always looking to work with people who will make us push the boundaries and create something extraordinary. I’ve never made 45-foot-long floorboards before, but one day the perfect project will come along and we’ll figure it out.”
“Every detail of the layout and design work is done in our workshop and every piece is carefully numbered so the installer doesn’t have to make any decisions,” says Walsh. Holes and damaged sections of reclaimed wood are repaired by hand to honor the wood’s original shape and wear.
Courtesy of WoodworksAs a result of Woodworks’ swashbuckling approach, they’ve created impossible-to-replicate foundations for some remarkable spaces. There’s the latticework done with exquisitely matched tone and grain for a renowned fashion house’s flagship store; the jewel box of a chapel set on a private island with an interlocking, puzzle-like design that looks as if it’s been in place since the Gothic period; and the floor painstakingly pieced together for a 50,000-square-foot office in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards. “We used really rare, really big pine beams that had been cut down in a primeval forest in North America around 1850, and then shipped to Liverpool, where they sat untouched, seasoning for 160 years until we bought them in 2022,” says Walsh. “Some of the trees were 1,000 years old, slow growth, wood of the finest grade with the straightest quality, and the brief was that every piece of wood needed to be used, and every piece needed to be repaired.”
A bespoke herringbone floor is worthy of this elegant apartment in Regent’s Crescent, along one of London’s most gracious royal parks. Crafted from European oak, the wood is cut to showcase an open grain that’s been hand-brushed to reveal all the charm of its natural knots and knolls.
Adam Parker PhotographyWalsh’s deep understanding of the quality of the wood, his ability to work on large-scale projects, and his proprietary methods for hand-restoring and finishing led to a floor like no other, with many types of unusual repairs—end grains, sections, butterfly patches—with a singular patina, a surface polished using nothing but the natural resins as protection, which seemed to glow from within.
“Our parquet patterns need to have total integrity,” says Walsh, who insists on laying out each piece by hand—especially important in perfecting circular shapes. The results of that painstaking effort show in this Sapphire Parquetry, a seamless design made with aged European oak.
Courtesy of Woodworks“Once the rarest woods are gone, that’s it, they’re gone and there won’t be another opportunity to buy them.”
ROBERT WALSH
Guided by a template, every shape in a Woodworks parquet panel is cut by hand. The edges of each piece are then hand finished to ensure all the elements flow and fit together flawlessly.
Courtesy of WoodworksEver the innovator, Walsh even makes his own machines and special equipment to create floors that have an integrity that’s extremely hard to achieve. Edges are rolled so that boards fit together softly, which gives a very different feeling from the crisp artificiality of beveled edges. Surfaces are carefully cleaned—never brushed—to maintain the original wear and shape of the floor using restoration techniques that require at least 10 different processes. “We want to honor the floor so that when you engage with it, when you walk on it or touch it, it feels soft and elegant and natural. Even though someone has spent months doing something to it, the floor should feel effortless, as if it’s always been there,” says Walsh.
“Rare French oak that’s been around for 180 years becomes this amazing honey color that you can’t create,” says Walsh. That hue infuses designer Andrianna Shamaris’s Soho, New York, penthouse with life. The antique flooring features traditional joinery with irregularly spaced yet precisely placed inlaid butterfly joints that elevates it to both a craft and design element.
Andrianna Shamaris, Thomas Leeser
