Broughton is a village that has been built and rebuilt on the same ground for over a thousand years, and what interests me about it as an architect is the continuity of that process. The earliest settlement here was Anglo-Saxon — a village along Gate Lane with a wooden church that preceded everything you see today. By the time the Domesday Book recorded the place as Burtone in 1086, stone had already begun to replace timber, and the Church of St Andrew that stands at the village's heart carries the evidence of every century since. A twelfth-century nave rebuilt with fourteenth-century arcades, a tower from around the turn of the fourteenth century, a chancel reconstructed in 1828 that carefully reused earlier windows and stonework — each generation adding to what it inherited rather than tearing it down. That kind of architectural patience, the willingness to adapt rather than replace, produces buildings with a depth that no single phase of construction could achieve. It is also, not coincidentally, the principle that guides how we work.
Award-winning Architects in Broughton
Why Gresford Architects for Projects in Broughton
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we now work from Oxford with clients across the country. I am an ARB-registered and RIBA Chartered architect, and a member of SPAB — the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings — whose philosophy of repair over replacement runs through everything we do. We are also members of the Passivhaus Trust and accredited with The Green Register, because the same care we bring to heritage applies to how a building uses energy. The Deerings, a certified Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, won the RIBA East Award in 2018. I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards that year, and in 2025 I served as a judge for the British Homes Awards. Our projects have been featured in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine and The Modern House Journal — work that ranges from a Grade II listed barn restoration in Buckinghamshire to a pink concrete extension in Hackney, but always returns to the same conviction: that buildings should be comfortable to inhabit, economical to run and designed to endure.
Designing for a Village Built in Ironstone
Renovations in Broughton begin with understanding the ironstone. This is the material that defines the village — roughly dressed and coursed, warm ochre in colour, used for everything from the church walls to the seventeenth-century houses along the main road. The conservation area that covers the historic core of the village was appraised by Kettering Borough Council in 2012, and that document sets out in detail the built character that any alteration must respect. Working with ironstone requires a particular sensitivity. Solid stone walls breathe; they manage moisture through their mass and their permeable lime mortar. Seal them with cement render or impermeable insulation and that cycle breaks down, leading to damp, decay and the slow deterioration of the very fabric you are trying to preserve. Through my training with SPAB, I approach these buildings with the understanding that the stone itself has an intelligence — a way of performing that has kept these walls standing for centuries — and the architect's job is to work with it.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, addresses the thermal performance of older homes without compromising what makes them valuable. In Broughton, the housing stock spans a wide range — from the ironstone cottages in the conservation area to later Victorian and Edwardian properties, and the twentieth-century homes that arrived as the village grew. Each demands a different approach. For solid-walled ironstone buildings, internal insulation must be vapour-open and compatible with the existing moisture dynamics. For the later housing, with its cavity walls and basic double glazing, the gains from a full EnerPHit retrofit — continuous insulation, airtightness detailing, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery — can be transformative, turning a home that costs a fortune to heat into one that is warm, quiet and efficient year-round.
Extension Design in Broughton's conservation area requires more than a good floor plan. North Northamptonshire Council, which now handles planning for the parish, will expect any extension to demonstrate that it sits comfortably within the established character — the scale of the existing buildings, the ironstone and stone-slate roof palette, the relationship between built form and the open spaces that punctuate the village. Outside the conservation area there is more flexibility, but the design ambition should be the same: an extension that feels like it belongs, that responds to the proportions and materials of the existing house rather than ignoring them. Whether the brief is opening up a ground floor, adding a garden room, or creating space above, the best extensions are the ones that make the whole building feel more considered, not just larger.
Sustainable Design is the thread that runs through every project we undertake, and in a village like Broughton it means something specific: choosing materials that age well alongside ironstone, designing for thermal performance without sacrificing the breathability that traditional construction demands, and thinking about how a building will serve the people who live in it not just next year but for the decades ahead. PassivHaus Design sets our benchmark for new construction — certified comfort with minimal energy demand. New Build Design in the village must navigate the character established by the conservation area appraisal, matching the scale and materiality of what already exists while bringing the performance standards of our own era. For sites in the countryside beyond the village, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route to exceptional new architecture in the open landscape, where the design must be truly outstanding and sensitive to its rural setting.
Broughton has been adapting for a thousand years — each generation finding a way to add to what came before without losing the thread. If you are considering a project here, whether renovating, extending, retrofitting or building new, we would welcome the conversation.