Felpham is a village of good original joinery
Much of Felpham was built between the wars by people who expected the woodwork to last. On the Summerley Estate, laid out from about 1922, and on the Beach Estate south of Limmer Lane, the houses still have their panelled doors, moulded architraves, turned balusters and, in the better-kept ones, the original casement windows. A good proportion of our Felpham carpentry is repairing that joinery, or making new pieces that match it, rather than replacing it with something off a shelf.
That is a skill as much as a service. Matching an architrave means profiling it, sometimes from a short piece salvaged from a cupboard. Making a new door to sit beside four originals means getting the panel proportions and the moulding right, not just the overall size. We make that kind of work in our own workshop at Middleton, a short drive along the coast, and fit it ourselves.
The conservation area: timber, painted, like for like
The Felpham conservation area was designated in 1985 and covers the old village along Felpham Road, Limmer Lane, Vicarage Lane and Waterloo Road. Its character appraisal describes the traditional joinery as painted timber and says plainly that uPVC replacing it is out of keeping. There are also more than twenty listed buildings in and around it, among them Blake's Cottage, the thatched house where William Blake lived from 1800 to 1803 and wrote the words that became Jerusalem.
For our customers that means three practical things:
- Windows and doors facing the street in the conservation area are best replaced in timber, made to match. A uPVC replacement there is the sort of thing the parish council's planning committee notices.
- In a listed house, joinery is part of the listed fabric. Repair is usually possible without consent; replacement usually is not. We check before we quote, not after.
- Repair first. A rotten bottom rail or a split sill can be cut out and spliced. It costs less than a new window and keeps the original glass.
Staircases in 1920s and 30s houses
The Summerley and Blake's Road houses often have their original staircases: a straight or quarter-turn flight with a closed string, a newel post with a cap, and square or turned balusters. Most are sound. Some have had their balusters boxed in, their treads covered in three layers of carpet and their handrails replaced with something from the eighties. Opening one back up is a satisfying piece of work: stripping the boxing, replacing missing balusters to match, re-fixing creaking treads from below, and fitting a handrail at a height that works today.
Where the stair genuinely needs replacing, it is a new staircase under the Building Regulations, with rise, going, headroom and balustrade gaps all set out by rule. Our price guide puts a straight softwood flight at £3,000 to £6,600 inc. VAT, and an oak stair or one with a winder at £6,000 to £12,000 inc. VAT.
Chalets and the space behind the slope
Hurstwood, built in the 1930s, is about a hundred houses and many of them are chalet bungalows; there are more on the Beach Estate. Every upstairs room in a chalet has a sloping ceiling and a low knee wall, and behind that knee wall a triangle of dead space running the length of the house. Built-in storage there is the best use of money in the room: wardrobes scribed to the slope, drawer banks that run in under the eaves, small doors cut to follow the roof line. Fitted wardrobes are priced on our guide at £1,680 to £2,880 per linear metre inc. VAT, depending on the doors and interiors.
Cladding gets looked at closely here
Felpham Parish Council's planning committee reads householder applications line by line. In September 2025 it accepted a scheme to replace timber cladding with clay tile hanging on a house in Felpham Gardens, and the same minutes show it objecting to first-floor extensions within a metre of the boundary and to drawings without scale bars. External joinery and cladding are the visible part of a house, and in Felpham they are judged. If cladding is part of what you want, we will talk you through what is likely to be welcome before anything is ordered.
Close to the sea, everything outside is stainless
Fixings on anything outside a Felpham house nearer the front, from a garden gate to a porch to fascia boards, are stainless steel. Galvanised screws bleed rust down new paint within a few winters in salt air, and replacing them means taking the work apart.
What we are asked for in Felpham
- Timber windows and doors repaired, or remade to match, in the old village
- Original staircases restored, or new stairs built to the regulations
- Fitted wardrobes and eaves storage in chalets and loft rooms
- Internal doors hung, from £156 per door inc. VAT; with a new lining and ironmongery, £360 to £660
- Alcove units either side of a chimney breast, £960 to £5,760 inc. VAT
The trade in full is under carpentry and joinery; the town page is carpentry in Bognor Regis, and the village is on builders in Felpham.
Send a photograph of the window, door or space and James will tell you whether it can be repaired, and what a match would cost if it cannot. Ring 07470 078236. Each item on its own line in the quotation, two years' guarantee on the workmanship.