What I find compelling about Bowerhill is the way each chapter of its history has left a completely different kind of building behind. Walk along Falcon Way or Lancaster Road and the street names tell you this was once RAF Melksham, the No. 12 School of Technical Training where thousands of Allied personnel learned their craft from 1940 until 1965. Before that, the chalybeate spring discovered at Bowerhill Farm in the 1770s inspired the Melksham Spa Company to commission a row of neo-classical lodging houses along Spa Road — ambitious, beautifully proportioned buildings that now stand as some of the most unexpected architecture in this part of Wiltshire. And then came the residential development of the 1980s, filling the former RAF site with the housing that most people in Bowerhill actually live in today. As an architect, I see a village whose homes are ready for the next chapter — not demolition and replacement, but thoughtful improvement that makes what already exists work harder, last longer, and feel genuinely good to live in.
Award-winning Architects in Bowerhill
Trusted Architects Working Across Wiltshire
A village like Bowerhill — where neo-classical spa buildings stand a short walk from 1980s housing estates and newer developments are still taking shape — needs an architect who can move comfortably between eras and building types. Gresford Architects was founded in London in 2006 and is now based in Oxford, working with clients across the country. I am ARB-registered and RIBA Chartered, a member of the Passivhaus Trust and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and accredited by The Green Register. Our Passivhaus project The Deerings won the RIBA East Award in 2018, and I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year in the same year's Building Design Awards — recognition rooted in a belief that homes should be comfortable, efficient, and designed to outlast the fashions of the decade they were built in. That matters here, where much of the housing stock was built quickly to meet demand after the RAF left, and the question now is how to make it perform for the next forty years.
How We Can Help with Your Bowerhill Project
Extension Design is where most conversations in Bowerhill are likely to begin. The 1980s homes that make up much of the village were built to the standards and expectations of their era — functional layouts, reasonable room sizes, but rarely the kind of open, light-filled spaces that families want now. Extending these homes offers a genuine opportunity to rethink how they work: opening up ground floors, connecting living spaces to gardens, and improving the thermal performance of the whole house in the process. Wiltshire Council, as the planning authority, will assess extensions against the existing character of the area, and the relatively modern housing stock in Bowerhill gives real design freedom compared to working within a conservation area.
That freedom does not mean the existing fabric should be ignored. The homes built on the former RAF site in the 1980s were constructed to the insulation standards of that era, which means walls, roofs, and windows that lose heat at rates unacceptable in anything built today. EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's retrofit standard, offers a rigorous pathway for transforming these homes without starting from scratch — upgrading insulation, airtightness, and ventilation to bring them close to new-build Passivhaus levels of comfort and efficiency. We applied this approach on The Old Orchard in Oxfordshire, an EnerPHit retrofit featured in The Modern House, and the principles translate directly to the cavity-wall construction and lightweight roofing typical of Bowerhill's housing stock. Sustainable Design underpins every project we take on — reducing energy demand through careful fabric design, natural ventilation, and materials chosen for durability as much as performance.
PassivHaus Design takes this further still, creating homes that maintain comfortable temperatures year-round with almost no active heating — an approach that proves its value most clearly in rising energy costs and unpredictable winters. For those planning New Build Design on the remaining development land around Bowerhill, including sites near Pathfinder Way, we design each home as an individual response to its site and orientation rather than a repetition of a standard type. Renovations to the older properties in the wider Melksham Without parish — including buildings with connections to the village's RAF and spa heritage — call for a different sensibility, balancing respect for existing character with genuine improvements to comfort and energy performance. Beyond Bowerhill's built-up edges, the open countryside of western Wiltshire falls under Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework, where planning consent for new rural homes depends on architecturally exceptional design that enhances its setting.
Bowerhill has reinvented itself more than once. If you are planning the next improvement to a home here — whether that is an extension, a retrofit, or something new entirely — we would welcome the chance to talk it through.