PVC or wooden sash?

[Ellieorange]

Our house is 1873, but not in conservation area or listed. Most of the original features, inc. staircase/ fireplaces have been ripped out. The windows are those horrible 1970's type and we are getting these replaced. Not sure whether to go with PVC (low maintenance) or wooden (looks nicer and more authentic). We are required by law to have double galzing whatever way we go. Anyone have experience of either wooden or PVC sash, and if so can you recommend a supplier?

We have old house that we bought 15 years ago and had horrible aluminium single glazed louvre windows. We replaced them with upvc about 11 years ago because we want to stay in the house forever and couldn't afford sash windows. We did replace 2 windows with wooden sliding sash from a company called Boulton and Paul, but they are very stiff and came with a wooden sill that looked odd resting on our stone sills - they didn't look authentic at all, so we felt that we had all the disadvantages of wood without the benefit. So we decided that it would be better to get upvc while the children were young and we had better things to do than house maintenance.
So we have ordinary upvc windows on the rest of the house and will replace them with proper sash windows one day when we're rich! The company we used were very friendly, not at all pushy. The bit that might interest you is that they also manufacture upvc 'wood lok a like' sliding sash windows. They look great - I don't think you would tell the difference between them an wooden ones. The only problem for us was the price. 10 years ago the ordinary upvc cost us £3500, but the sliding sash ones would have been £10,000. The company is called CRK Windows based in Hemel Hempstead