There is a building on Manor Farm in Brimpton that was once a chapel for the Knights Templar. The Chapel of St Leonard, Grade II* listed, dates from the twelfth century and later, its flint walls and stone quoins served the Shalford Preceptory for generations, and by 1614 had been converted into a barn. It sits on Historic England's Heritage at Risk register now. That trajectory — a building passing through centuries of use, each generation finding a different purpose for the same fabric — is the kind of story that reminds me why I became an architect. Buildings outlive the intentions of their makers. The question is whether we meet them with the care they demand. Brimpton is a parish where that question is present everywhere you look, from the village centre on its higher ground to Hyde End in the valley carved by the River Enborne, and in the listed buildings that anchor this small community to a history stretching back through the Bronze Age Borson Barrows on the southern boundary.
Award-winning Architects in Brimpton
Why Homeowners in Brimpton Trust Gresford Architects
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006. We are now based in Oxford and work with clients across the country — including communities in West Berkshire where heritage sensitivity and environmental performance are not competing priorities but inseparable ones. Our RIBA East Award for The Deerings in Hertfordshire recognised a home where Passivhaus principles delivered genuine comfort, durability, and low running costs. I was shortlisted for the RIBA South Award for The Old Water Tower, named a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the 2018 Building Design Awards, and in 2025 I judged the British Homes Awards. As a Chartered Architect registered with the ARB, and a member of RIBA, SPAB, the Passivhaus Trust, and The Green Register, we bring together the technical knowledge of low-energy design with a deep respect for the buildings and places we work within. Our projects have been published in Dezeen, The Modern House Journal, Grand Designs Magazine, and the RIBA Journal — work that reflects our belief that sustainability and heritage care are two sides of the same commitment.
Architectural Services for Homes in Brimpton
Renovations in Brimpton begin with understanding what you are working with, and in this parish that means buildings whose materials carry real weight. The village sits within a conservation area designated in 1971, and the listed structures here range from the flint-walled Chapel of St Leonard to Brimpton House, a Georgian farmhouse built around 1812, to the seventeenth-century brickwork of Shalford Manor Farm House. Each of these buildings tells you something about how the parish was made — flint gathered from the fields, brick fired from local clay, stone brought in for the quoins and dressings that mark the more significant structures. West Berkshire Council handles planning for the parish, and within the conservation area any renovation work must demonstrate that it preserves the character and appearance of the historic setting. My membership of SPAB — the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings — reflects the principle that guides all our renovation work: understand the building first, repair rather than replace, and ensure every intervention is honest about what is old and what is new.
EnerPHit is our certified whole-house retrofit standard, and in Brimpton it addresses the particular challenge of improving the energy performance of buildings that were never designed for it. The older homes here — flint cottages, brick farmhouses, properties with solid walls and no cavity — lose heat in ways that a standard insulation approach would only mask rather than solve. Wrapping a breathable flint wall in the wrong material traps moisture and damages the very fabric you are trying to protect. An EnerPHit strategy works differently: breathable insulation, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, careful airtightness detailing that respects how the wall actually performs. The result, in a village where homes sit alongside listed structures and within a conservation area, is a building that is dramatically warmer and cheaper to run without compromising the character that makes Brimpton what it is.
Extension Design in the parish requires a conversation between what exists and what is possible. Within the conservation area, an extension to a home near the village green or along the lane toward Hyde End must respond to the scale, materials, and rhythm of its neighbours — the brick, the flint, the proportions of window to wall that give these buildings their settled quality. We approach extensions as an exercise in careful listening, reading the building and its setting before drawing a single line. Sustainable Design runs through everything we do, and in a rural parish like Brimpton it begins with the recognition that the most sustainable materials are often the ones already present — the flint, the clay, the timber traditions that shaped this landscape over centuries. PassivHaus Design is our benchmark for new homes, delivering thermal comfort and minimal energy use from the day you move in. New Build Design in a parish with this density of heritage requires particular sensitivity to context, working with rather than against the grain of what already exists. Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework offers a route to exceptional architecture in the open countryside around Brimpton, and we have experience navigating that framework for homes that genuinely enhance their rural setting.
Brimpton is a village where every generation has found its own way to care for what was built before — from the Templars who worshipped in St Leonard's Chapel to the people who live here now. If you are considering a project in the parish, whether renovating a listed building, improving an older home's energy performance, or building something new in this part of West Berkshire, we would welcome the conversation.