240cm of solid French oak, long enough to seat eight comfortably and ten at a squeeze. Built around the kind of broken-plan kitchen-diner that's become the default for British homes since 2010, with two 37mm-thick slabs joined edge-to-edge and hand-finished in Wickford. From £2,410, including the steel base and free two-person delivery.
An 8-seater is the size that justifies a dedicated dining room, or earns its place at the centre of a kitchen extension. The top is two slabs of solid French oak, joined edge-to-edge, planed flat and sealed in food-safe hardwax oil. The 240cm length runs to ten place settings if you push them in, or eight with elbow room, and reads as a single statement piece of timber even in a 6m-wide room.
The single-storey extension that runs across the back of a Victorian or Edwardian terrace, knocking the old kitchen and dining room into one open space. Bi-folds open onto the garden, with a kitchen island in the middle and the dining table at the far end. A 240cm × 100cm in natural oil with X-frame legs is the most-shipped configuration, and sits perfectly between bi-folds and back wall.
The four- or five-bed detached new-build with a square open-plan kitchen-diner and a separate "snug". The dining zone in those plans is typically around 5m × 4m, which is easily large enough for a 240cm table with the chairs pulled out and a sideboard along the back wall. Common in Beaulieu (Chelmsford), Shenfield, Hutton and the Essex commuter belt generally.
Larger Edwardian and Georgian dining rooms (the kind found in Lexden, Hampstead, Notting Hill and the Cotswolds) were built around big tables that anchored eight to twelve. A 240cm × 100cm in walnut or chocolate, on a Spider or Designer X base, sits naturally under high ceilings without reading as oversized.
At 240cm the table is heavy, so we'd suggest a 100cm or 110cm width for proportion. The narrower 90cm width looks fine, but the chair pull-back becomes the bottleneck. Width upcharges scale with the timber: 100cm is +£200 over the 90cm baseline, 110cm is +£400, and 120cm is +£600.
For a 240cm top, the X-frame, Designer X and Spider single-pedestal bases all work well. The standard Box and Hairpin legs are still structurally fine, but they tend to read as visually understated against the length of the slab. Add a matching bench if you want to seat ten without ten chairs.
Two slabs of solid French oak joined edge-to-edge into a single 37mm top, finished by hand in Wickford, Essex. No veneer, no hollow underside.
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