The term parquet originated in France in the early seventeenth century, and was first used to describe the raised area behind a balustrade, then laid with a more elaborate floor. The term was later applied to the whole floor. The definition of parquet is flooring of thin hardwood laid in patterns on a wooden sub-floor. The design of the famous Parquet de Versailles was derived from Serlio and Palladio and copied by d’Aviler in his Cours Complet d’Architecture of 1691. It became the standard floor for the formal rooms of French châteaux in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The design is of the interlaced diagonals, set within squares. The Galerie d’Hercule of the Hôtel Lambert, Paris, by Le Vau, completed in c.1650, decorated with the labours of Hercules, is floored with Parquet de Versailles. So is the rococo Salon de M. le Prince in the Château de Chantilly, near Paris of 1722. The lovely Salon Ovale at the Hôtel Soubise in Paris of 1738-1740, decorated by Germain Boffrand for the Princesse de Soubise in a flowing rococo style, has Parquet de Versailles.

Herringbone parquetry, a common variant, consists of parallel rows of diagonals. The spectacular Salle des Gardes de le Reine at the Château de Versailles, by Le Vau c.1670, with its marble wall paneling, painted ceiling, carved woodwork and herringbone parquetry is one of the finest rooms in the Palace.

In Britain, floor boards of plain oak were more common than decorative parquet floors. Thomas Sheraton, in The Cabinet Dictionary of 1803, outlines methods of laying boarded floors:

There are three methods by which floors are laid. First, with the plain jointed edges, and nailed down. Second, jointing and ploughing the edges to receive a winscot tongue about an inch broad, and bare quarter thick, by which the dust is prevent from falling through, in many cases where there is no ceiling. These may be nailed at every set board at the edge, so that no ails be seen. Third, when they are laid with douwells of oak-board into the edge, and every one set as they are laid. In this method the pieces of wainscot, let in half an inch onto the edge of the board, and rather more into joints. This is a troublesome but most effectual method, and by a little practice may be done with greater facility, than is at first apprehended. The ancient floors of a good quality, were generally made of oak boards, and very curiously laid, by forking the end together in large floors, where more than one length was wanted.

Source: Historic Floors by Jane Fawcett