W L West & Sons Ltd

Small Enough to Care, Big Enough to Cope - your local family Timber Merchants

The West family, for as long as anyone can remember, has been involved with timber. In the middle nineteenth century, they were journeyman sawmillers, felling timber and sawing from a pit in the woods where the timber was cut.

Earliest company records are dated in 1865. The company in its present form, is a traditional home-grown timber merchant who started trading, as W. L. West & Sons, on a permanent site at Midhurst about eighty years ago, sawing round logs by means of pit saws. Mechanisation over the years progressed through steam powered engines and belt driven saws to a fully modern sawmill today. The company was incorporated in 1957 as a limited company.

In 1986, the Company moved to a much larger twelve acre site at Selham, midway between Midhurst and Petworth (just off the A272), to purpose built sawmills and factory with computerised oil fired kilns.

As well as having extensive outside air drying stocks, over fifty thousand square feet of drying sheds have been erected to hold stocks of air-dried and kiln-dried timbers. Continual growth in the Company has meant that it is now one of the larger temperate hardwood sawmills in the country and second to none as far as English oak is concerned.

Forward capital project planning has always been designed to ensure that the infrastructure, machinery and stockholding is such that the growing requirements of the market place can easily be met.

It is pleasing that the business is still firmly in family hands, with four of Walter Luke West's grandchildren and five of his great-grandchildren involved in the business. Walter Luke West can be seen in the picture at the top of this page.

WHY USE US?

We care that we ensure that our customers have the right product to fit the requirement. We will spend that extra time to ensure the product is right. Many people have a vision of the species that they require to do a job, which sadly may be an incorrect choice from a finish or performance point of view. We would rather take time to ensure your total satisfaction, than sell and incorrect species and get complaints afterwards.

Don’t forget, for all of your hardwood and joinery softwood requirements ...................

Call our Sales team on 01798 861611 or email: sales@wlwest.co.uk