In the 1950s, when the nave roof of St Peter and St Paul in Checkendon needed renewing, the work was guided by Eric Kennington — a war artist and sculptor who had spent decades recording the faces of soldiers and airmen, and who served as churchwarden here in the village where he lived. Under his direction, local people carved the roof bosses by hand. What moves me about that story is not just the craftsmanship but the collaboration — a building shaped by the hands of the community it shelters. That instinct, that architecture is something made with people rather than merely for them, runs through everything we do at Gresford Architects. We work with homeowners in Checkendon and across the Chilterns to create homes that are comfortable, efficient, carefully detailed and genuinely theirs.
Award-winning Architects in Checkendon
Why Clients in the Chilterns Trust Gresford
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we are now based at the Oxford Eco Centre on Osney Mead. We are RIBA Chartered and ARB registered, members of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, accredited by The Green Register, and members of the Passivhaus Trust. That breadth matters in a place like Checkendon, where a Grade I listed Norman church stands within yards of timber-framed cottages from the fifteenth century, and the whole village sits within the Chilterns National Landscape. You need an architect who understands historic fabric and environmental performance as parts of the same discipline, not competing priorities. Our Passivhaus home The Deerings won a RIBA East Award in 2018. The Old Water Tower was shortlisted for a RIBA South Award in 2016. I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the 2018 Building Design Awards and judged the British Homes Awards in 2025. Our work has appeared in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine and The Modern House Journal — projects that demonstrate how conservation sensitivity and contemporary ambition can sit comfortably together.
Architectural Services for Homes in Checkendon
Checkendon is a dispersed settlement set among the beech woods of the South Oxfordshire Chilterns, recorded as Cecadene in the Domesday Book. Its conservation area holds buildings spanning nearly a thousand years — from the twelfth-century nave of St Peter and St Paul, with its remarkable early thirteenth-century wall paintings of Christ in Majesty and a procession of Apostles, to timber-framed structures like Scots Farmhouse, which dates from the later fifteenth century. South Oxfordshire District Council is the local planning authority, and the Chilterns National Landscape designation places every proposal within a framework of landscape stewardship. For us, that framework sharpens the work rather than limiting it.
Renovations in Checkendon call for an understanding of how these buildings were made — their timber frames, their flint and brick, their rubble cores — and a willingness to work within that logic rather than against it. Our membership of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings reflects a philosophy we apply to every heritage project: understand the building first, intervene with care, and let the original craftsmanship remain legible. The Norman south doorway of St Peter and St Paul, with its jamb shafts carved with eagles and monsters, has survived because each generation chose to preserve rather than replace. That is the standard we hold ourselves to.
Many homes in Checkendon are solid-walled structures — beautiful but thermally challenging. EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, offers a rigorous approach to improving comfort and energy performance without compromising the character that makes these buildings worth keeping. Carefully positioned insulation, improved airtightness, and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery transform how a home feels to live in while leaving its external appearance and historic fabric intact.
Extension Design in the conservation area requires a sensitive reading of scale, materials and the relationship between buildings and the woodland landscape that defines Checkendon's setting. The timber frames and flint walls of structures like Scots Farmhouse demand particular care — any addition must read as a genuine conversation with the original building, not an interruption. Sustainable Design is our starting point for every project — orientation, natural ventilation, fabric-first performance — principles that feel entirely natural in a National Landscape where the relationship between building and environment is everything. PassivHaus Design takes that thinking to its most disciplined expression: superinsulation, triple glazing, meticulous airtightness detailing, delivering homes where heating demand is a fraction of conventional construction.
The wooded hills and open farmland around Checkendon are exactly the landscape where Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework comes into play. It provides a route for exceptional homes in the open countryside — dwellings justified by the quality of their architecture and their response to the land. New Build Design in this setting demands a deep sensitivity to topography, tree cover, light and the materials that have always defined building in the Chilterns. It is challenging work, and it is work we find deeply rewarding.
Checkendon has been shaped by people who cared about craft and collaboration — from the Norman masons who carved eagles into the church doorway to the villagers who carved roof bosses under Kennington's guidance eight centuries later. If you are considering a project here, we would welcome the conversation. The best architecture in a place like this begins with understanding what is already here, and building from that.