There is an old iron water pump at the entrance to Park Lane in Charvil, said to have been installed in 1754 as one of a series serving travellers along the coaching road from London to Bath. It is a small thing — easy to walk past — but it tells you something essential about this village. Charvil grew from a single route. The Old Bath Road was its spine, and for centuries the handful of farms and cottages that made up the settlement existed because the road did. What interests me as an architect is how a place shaped by one era of movement — the coaching road, the turnpike, the toll-gate near Charvil Farm — then absorbed the housing of a completely different era without quite losing its identity. The post-war homes that now make up most of the village sit alongside fragments of that older story, and the tension between the two is where the most rewarding architectural work begins.
Award-winning Architects in Charvil
Why Our Practice Works in Charvil
Gresford Architects was founded in London in 2006 and is now based in Oxford, working with clients nationwide on projects where sustainability, comfort and sensitivity to place are not separate ambitions but the same one. I am a RIBA chartered and ARB registered architect, a member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, accredited by The Green Register, and a member of the Passivhaus Trust. My wife Phoebe is a conservation architect, and her work has deepened my respect for older buildings — particularly the kind you find in Charvil along Old Bath Road, where the Grade II listed Charvill Farmhouse is a reminder that every intervention must start with understanding how traditional construction works. In 2018, The Deerings — a Passivhaus home we designed in Hertfordshire — won a RIBA East Award, and I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards. Our work has been featured in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine, The Modern House Journal and The Spaces. In 2025, I served as a judge at the British Homes Awards.
Upgrading the Homes That Shaped Modern Charvil
In 1900, Charvil had around twenty houses. The village that exists today is largely a product of the mid-to-late twentieth century — successive waves of development that brought families to a quiet stretch between Sonning and Twyford, drawn by the semi-rural character and the proximity to Reading. Those homes served their purpose well, but many are now fifty, sixty, seventy years old, and their original fabric was never designed for the thermal standards or the energy costs we face today. EnerPHit retrofit transforms how these homes perform — a certified standard that brings a 1960s or 1970s detached house in Charvil into line with contemporary thermal comfort without losing its character. That typically means carefully detailed external wall insulation, triple-glazed windows that cut heat loss dramatically, and a mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery that delivers genuinely fresh air to every room. The result is a home that is more comfortable to inhabit, more economical to run, and quieter — measurably so. Our project at The Old Orchard in Oxfordshire demonstrated exactly this approach: a thorough EnerPHit retrofit that transformed thermal performance without losing the character of the building.
Extension Design is often where families in Charvil begin. The housing stock here — predominantly three- and four-bedroom detached and semi-detached houses — was built to standard layouts that do not always reflect how people live now. A kitchen that turns its back on the garden, a dining room that sees little use, bedrooms that could be reconfigured to give a growing family the space it needs. We approach every extension as an opportunity to rethink the whole ground floor, not just add square footage, and to ensure the new and existing elements work together as a single thermal envelope. Planning applications in Charvil are determined by Wokingham Borough Council, and the village's Neighbourhood Plan sets out design expectations for new development that respect the character of each part of the parish — something we welcome, because good design guidance makes better buildings.
For new homes in Charvil, Sustainable Design means thinking about orientation, materials and the long-term energy strategy from the very start — but also about how a building sits between the village and the open countryside that edges toward the Thames and Loddon floodplains. New Build Design gives us the chance to get everything right from the outset, whether on infill plots within the village or as part of future development where every detail of fabric performance, daylighting and connection to the garden matters. That sensitivity to setting is why Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework matters here; it offers a route for genuinely outstanding homes where standard development would not be permitted, but only if the architecture earns its place. PassivHaus Design applies the same thinking at its most rigorous: homes that perform almost without conventional heating, maintain even temperatures year-round, and are built to endure well beyond our lifetimes. Renovations to Charvil's older buildings — the few heritage assets along Old Bath Road that tell the story of the village's earlier centuries — deserve the same respect for their context. We treat every project as an opportunity to make a home that is more comfortable, more efficient, and more connected to the place it occupies.
Charvil is a village that has grown in chapters — from the coaching road and its farmsteads to the post-war estates and the newer development beyond. If you are planning a project here, whether it is a retrofit that transforms how your home performs or an extension that changes how your family lives in it, we would welcome the conversation.