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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 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 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
The playing surface is the part you see, and the part that decides how a floor performs sits underneath it. An area elastic system uses resilient pads or cradles under battens so that a landing spreads its load across a wide zone, which is what BS EN 14904 asks of a hall built for ball sports.
A point elastic surface, typically vinyl or polyurethane on a foam backing, gives beneath the foot only. Combined systems put a point elastic layer over an area elastic base for halls that mix sport with fitness and dance.
Above the structure sits solid strip or engineered board, most often maple, beech or oak. In Shropshire we are usually looking at older halls where the original battens are sound and the question is how much wear layer remains, not which system to buy.
Most of what goes wrong with a sprung floor happens where nobody can see it. Foam pads crush and harden with age, softwood battens split at the fixings, and plastic cradles crack. The symptom upstairs is a dead spot, a squeak or a board that dips under a heel.
We lift the boards locally, replace the failed pads or battens with matching components, and refit the original timber so the repair is invisible once the floor is sanded. On older halls we also check for rot where a leak or a wet cleaning regime has soaked the battens.
Widespread structural failure is different, and we will say so. But an isolated dead spot in a Shropshire school hall is a morning of work, not a reason to start a conversation about replacement, and it is priced as a small element within the wider job.
Slip resistance is measured with a pendulum, a swinging arm with a rubber slider that mimics a heel striking the floor. The reading is a pendulum test value. It is the method the Health and Safety Executive recognises, and it gives a number you can defend, not an impression.
We test wet and dry across the hall, paying particular attention to the traffic lanes, the goal areas and the centre third where the seal wears first. A single average hides the patch that is dangerous, so results are reported point by point.
For a village hall committee in Shropshire the certificate is often the first hard evidence they have ever held about their floor. It sits in the file, it satisfies an insurer, and repeated each year it shows whether the surface is holding up or sliding towards a reseal.
Granwood is a composite block made from wood flour and cement, pressed and laid in a bitumen bed. It went into a great many school and church halls from the nineteen thirties on, and a surprising number in this county are still down and still sound.
It is not timber and cannot be sanded like timber. There is no grain and no wear layer, and heat from a machine held in one spot softens the bitumen and draws it up through the joints. Bitumen beds from before the mid eighties may contain asbestos, so we test before disturbing anything.
Restoration means rebedding loose blocks, replacing broken ones, preparing the surface with the correct abrasives and applying a modified epoxy coating system with the markings sealed within it. Most Granwood floors we are asked to condemn do not need condemning.
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.
Light foot traffic after roughly twenty four hours, full use with equipment and furniture back after seventy two hours or more, and longer in a cold hall in winter. We put the times in writing for the product used and ask that the room is locked until they have passed.
Regularly, for leisure centres and any hall with a full weekday programme. Sanding is timed for the quietest hours and the seal goes on at the end of the shift so the floor is walkable by morning. We price it alongside a daytime programme so you can compare.
Comfortably. A full sand, repair, seal and mark of a typical school hall takes one to two weeks plus cure time, which leaves margin inside a six week break. Half terms suit recoats and relining. Summer dates fill early, so speak to us in the spring term.
Sealed extraction on every machine including the edge sander, screening of the hall, taped doorways and an agreed plan for isolating any shared air handling. We vacuum down at the end of each shift so nothing is walked into corridors, kitchens or classrooms.
Yes, from current governing body figures with laser and tape, checking the diagonals before any paint goes down. We never trace the existing lines, because copied courts drift with every remark and many halls turn out to have thirds that are not equal or arcs that are short.
Only when it is run badly. The timber has to be specified for heating, the surface temperature limited, and the system brought up gradually at the start of each season. Switched on at full output in October it dries the boards, opens gaps and can cup them permanently.
Put a protective covering down before the desks arrive. Steel desk and chair legs score a seal faster than any sport, and a hall that has hosted a season of exams unprotected can need a recoat years early. The covering rolls up and stores for the next sitting.
Yes. Survey reports set out the condition, moisture readings, remaining wear layer, recommended work and firm costs, which is what Condition Improvement Fund and community grant applications ask for. Many committees and school business managers use the report as the evidence in the bid.
Book a free survey of your sports floor anywhere in Shropshire. We travel once, measure everything and price the whole job as a single visit, so you know the full cost before we set off. Call 01823 674562 or send us a message.