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Flooring Professionals To The Leisure Industry
Courtship Flooring is a commercial sports flooring contractor working in Shropshire and across the UK. Our work spans market town schools, rural community halls and leisure facilities across a large, thinly populated county.
Founded in 1987 and still run by the same family, we specialise in commercial sports and timber flooring: new installations, full refurbishments, sanding and resealing, court markings, pendulum testing and maintenance contracts. Domestic enquiries are passed to Ryan’s Restorations.
Overnight/Weekend Installations
Professional Cleaning Demonstrations
Squash Court Maintenance
Recommended Cleaning Products
Professional Pendulum Slip Testing
Deep Clean & Reseal Service
Rural facilities suffer most from contractors who work in stages, because every return visit carries its own mobilisation. We plan work here as a single complete programme covering survey, repairs, sanding, sealing, marking and testing.
All materials and machinery arrive at the outset, everything is priced before we travel, and nothing is left waiting on a second trip. It is both cheaper and considerably less disruptive.
In smaller settlements a single hall is the sports centre, the theatre, the polling station and the function room. Its floor absorbs badminton, staging, trestle tables and dancing, frequently in the same week.
Specifying such a floor honestly means acknowledging the compromise: a finish tough enough for furniture will never feel quite like a dedicated sports surface. We explain that trade-off rather than overselling either extreme.
Where a building is maintained by volunteers rather than a facilities team, the cleaning routine determines the life of the finish more than anything we do. Over-strength product is the usual culprit, applied with entirely good intentions.
We provide a simple written routine, recommend suitable products and demonstrate the method to whoever looks after the hall. It takes an hour and regularly adds years to a floor.
The gymnasium at The Bradfield Club had served generations and its floor wore every year of it. We sanded the original timber back to life, made the repairs it genuinely needed, then resealed and re-marked the space.
Community facilities work to tight budgets and cannot lose their halls for long, so the programme was planned accordingly and finished on the date agreed.
~ Matthew Evans
An outstanding company to deal with and they couldn’t have been better to work with. St George’s Ascot now has a stunning new sports hall floor and we are delighted. From quote, support, delivery and after sales, the Team has been brilliant. Thank you. 
~ James Anderson
Badminton is unforgiving about dimensions because the service courts are small and an error of a few centimetres changes where a shuttle lands.
A doubles court is 13.4 by 6.1 metres, narrowing to 5.18 metres for singles, with the short service line 1.98 metres from the net. We set out from those numbers rather than from the lines already on your floor, because a great many halls carry badminton courts that were laid slightly out decades ago and have been faithfully copied at every remark since. If your courts have always felt cramped at the back, that is usually why.
In a multi court hall the critical dimension is the separation between courts. Too tight and players from adjacent courts collide chasing wide shots. Where a hall is genuinely too narrow we will say that three courts laid out correctly beats four laid out badly.
Badminton lines are conventionally white or yellow, chosen to read clearly against everything else already on the floor.
School work is governed by a date that does not move, and everything else is arranged around it.
A full sand and seal of a typical school hall takes one to two weeks, which fits comfortably into a summer holiday. Smaller halls and screen and recoat work fit into a half term. Easter and Christmas suit shorter jobs, though the drying conditions in midwinter need allowing for rather than ignoring.
Summer slots go early. Schools that ring in June are usually looking at the following year, and we would far rather have the conversation in January when there is still choice about dates. Trusts planning several halls should be thinking a full year ahead.
What makes these jobs work is preparation rather than long hours. We survey properly so nothing unexpected appears once the finish comes off, we order materials in advance, we staff the job to the programme instead of spreading a team thin, and we build cure times into the schedule rather than treating them as spare. The hall is back for the first day of term because it was planned to be.
Markings are the part of a floor everybody looks at, and the part most often got wrong.
We set out from current governing body dimensions using laser and tape, not by copying what is already on the floor. Courts that have been remarked by tracing the previous set drift over the years, and a surprising number of halls turn out to have netball thirds that are not equal or three point arcs that are not true.
On timber the lines go down between coats of seal so the paint finishes under the final lacquer. That single detail is why our markings last as long as the finish, while lines applied on top of a completed floor start lifting within a season.
We will also ask what is actually played. Most halls carry markings for at least one sport nobody has taught in years, and removing redundant sets does more for clarity than any amount of clever colour choice. Fewer lines, correctly dimensioned, in colours that separate properly under your own lighting.
University sports facilities have a particular problem: they are busy year round, so the long summer shutdown that schools rely on does not exist.
Term brings curriculum use, club training and league fixtures. The summer brings conferences, summer schools and external hire, which is often more lucrative than term time use. The window for work is therefore narrow, defined and non negotiable.
The way we handle it is by planning to the window rather than hoping to fit inside it. We survey early, order materials in advance, staff the job properly rather than spreading a team across sites, and build the cure times into the programme rather than treating them as slack.
Campus estates usually hold several floors of different ages: a main sports hall, studios, squash courts and a fitness suite, often built decades apart. A condition survey across all of them, with a phased programme, is generally far more useful than dealing with each as it becomes urgent.
Shropshire is a large rural county, and the work comes to us predominantly from school sports halls, independent school sport and community buildings rather than large leisure estates.
School halls are the biggest group. In many Shropshire communities the school hall is also the main indoor sports space for the area, taking curriculum sport, club training and community lettings on the same floor, which wears a finish considerably faster than the timetable suggests.
Independent school sport is a notable strand here, with well maintained buildings, high expectations of finish quality and work planned well ahead into fixed holiday windows.
Village halls and church halls follow, and the county has a great many. Those timber floors are frequently a century old with plenty of depth left, buried under decades of polish and scored by chair and table legs.
Because journeys within the county take a while, we plan work here as continuous blocks and bring everything with us rather than expecting to collect materials locally.
Shropshire enquiries are shaped by a rural stock where individual halls serve wide areas.
The most common is a school hall that is also the main indoor sports facility for the surrounding community, taking curriculum use, club training and lettings on the same floor. That wears a finish faster than the timetable suggests and those halls frequently arrive overdue.
The second is independent school facilities, which tend to be better maintained and come to us for preventative work before the finish fails.
The third is village and church halls with century old timber floors under decades of polish. Removing that build up chemically before sanding is essential, and underneath there is almost always a floor with plenty of life left.
Moisture readings matter in older buildings with solid floors, and we take them as a diagnostic step rather than a formality.
It varies with the state of the floor more than anything else. A hall needing only a clean and reline costs very little; one needing full sanding, repairs and resealing costs more but still far less than replacement. We will tell you honestly which category yours is in.
Yes, along with the surrounding area. Projects are planned as complete visits with everything agreed before we travel, so distance affects our logistics rather than your price or the quality of the finish.
Solid and engineered timber from Junckers, Boen and Havwoods, plus vinyl, polyurethane and lino, and specialist coating systems for Granwood and composite block floors.
Usually cleaning residue rather than a worn seal. Over-strength product or the wrong pH leaves a film that reduces grip. A deep clean normally restores it, and a slip test confirms it objectively.
Yes. Boards are matched by species and grade so repairs blend into the finish rather than announcing themselves. It is one of the reasons we do repairs in-house.
Satin or matt in almost every case. Gloss looks impressive at handover and shows every scuff within weeks, as well as producing noticeable glare under modern lighting.
Yes. We survey, take moisture readings, measure the remaining board depth and look at the structure, then quote a fixed sum broken down by element. There is no charge and no obligation.
Dust mop daily to lift grit, damp mop with a neutral cleaner made for sealed sports timber, and never use polish, wax or anything promising shine. We hand over written guidance with every job.
A well maintained hall wants a light screen and recoat every two to three years and a full sand roughly every ten. Sticking to that keeps the boards alive far longer, because every full sand removes timber permanently.
Constantly. Summer holidays and half terms are when most of our school work happens, and summer slots book up early. If you are planning for next year it is worth speaking to us in January rather than June.
No. We are a commercial contractor working on schools, leisure centres, universities, clubs and public buildings. The machinery, finishes and insurance are different from domestic work.
Book a free survey of your floor in Shropshire and we will tell you honestly what it needs, what it will cost and how quickly it can happen. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message.