Company

The new Forest Woodburning Centre was launched in 1978 by passionate woodburners, and advocates of self-sufficiency, Peregrine and Fiona Bruce, who still run the business today.

Starting on a shoestring budget, the Bruces initially sold Norwegian, Belgian and Danish stoves from their garage. The global energy crisis, coupled with the decimation of the UK’s tree population by Dutch Elm disease, proved fertile ground for the nascent British market in stoves. The company quickly outgrew the garage, and moved into an old coach house adjacent to Brockenhurst train station.

British companies soon started to design and manufacture home-grown stoves, and a revolution in efficient stove design was pioneered by Clearview Stoves. This transformed the market, and ushered in an era of highly efficient and clean wood-burning appliances which could now be legally installed within “smokeless” areas. Whereas the early adopters of woodburning had largely been those living in the countryside on smallholdings, farms and estates, stoves were now increasingly being installed in suburban, town and even city homes.

Since its inception, the business has gone from strength to strength, moving to its current address in Sway - a spacious converted Victorian schoolhouse - in 1987, yet the company ethos remains exactly the same. With our motto, “Warmth For The Wise”, the company has always been about more than simply selling stoves – it is about fostering sustainable self-reliance and harmony with the environment, a philosophy thoroughly in tune with modern times.

Today, the company’s installers fit hundreds of stoves each year, as well as lining existing - and building new - chimneys, laying hearths, and constructing fireplaces, all in full compliance with the raft of regulation that has grown up about the industry.

In this age of high energy prices, fuel scarcity and concern about carbon emissions, our mission has never been more relevant.