There are few towns in England where a single architectural idea was carried out so thoroughly, and over so short a period, as in Cheltenham. Walk from the Promenade through Montpellier and up towards Pittville, and you are moving through a town that was imagined almost whole — the terraces, the crescents, the formal gardens and tree-lined walks all part of a Regency vision of how a spa town should look, feel and function. The oolitic limestone that was quarried from Leckhampton Hill to build these facades still catches the light in a way that makes you understand why proportion mattered so much to the architects who worked here. What interests me about Cheltenham is the discipline of that coherence. The conservation areas that cover so much of the town — from the Promenade through Lansdown and up to Pittville — are not a constraint to work around but a conversation to enter. Every project here begins with understanding what this town already is, and how thoughtful architecture can add to it without breaking the thread.
Award-winning Architects in Cheltenham
Why Cheltenham Clients Trust Gresford Architects
Cheltenham demands an architect who can hold two things at once: genuine respect for what the Regency builders achieved, and the technical knowledge to bring those buildings into an era of energy performance and climate responsibility. That tension — between preserving beauty and improving how a building actually works — is what drew me to architecture in the first place. I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we are now based in Oxford, working with clients across the country. My wife Phoebe is a conservation architect, and her way of reading a building — understanding the logic behind every moulding, every proportion, every material choice — has shaped how our practice approaches heritage. In a town where the heritage register runs to thousands of entries, that matters. I am a RIBA Chartered and ARB Registered architect, a member of SPAB, and accredited with The Green Register. My SPAB training taught me to see repair as a discipline, not a compromise — to understand that a Regency stucco facade has its own material intelligence, and the architect's job is to work with it rather than against it. We are also members of the Passivhaus Trust, and that is not a contradiction. The Deerings, our Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, won a RIBA East Award precisely because it showed that rigorous energy performance and thoughtful design are the same ambition. I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the 2018 Building Design Awards and a judge at the British Homes Awards in 2025. Our work — published in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine and The Modern House Journal — ranges from a pink concrete extension in Hackney to an EnerPHit retrofit in Oxfordshire, but the thread that runs through all of it is a belief that buildings should be comfortable to inhabit, economical to run and designed to last.
Architectural Services for Homes in Cheltenham
Renovations in Cheltenham carry a weight that they do not carry in most towns, because the buildings themselves are often the reason people choose to live here. The Regency terraces along the Promenade, the stuccoed villas of Lansdown and Bayshill, the formal compositions of Pittville — these are homes built with an attention to proportion, light and ornament that rewards careful stewardship. Cheltenham Borough Council requires listed building consent for any works that affect the character of a listed building, and with over 2,600 on the register, that applies to a significant share of the town's housing stock. A renovation that respects the existing fabric — repairing lime plaster, reinstating timber sash windows to their original profiles, opening up rooms that had been subdivided in the twentieth century — can reveal the quality that was always there. As a member of SPAB, I approach these buildings with the understanding that every layer tells a story, and the goal is not to return a building to some imagined original state but to allow it to continue ageing well.
Anyone who has spent a February in a Cheltenham Regency terrace knows the paradox: the rooms are beautiful — generous proportions, high ceilings, elegant sash windows that flood the space with light — and they are also draughty, expensive to heat, and impossible to keep warm once the temperature drops. The Regency builders were working with Leckhampton limestone and lime render, not with thermal performance in mind. EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's retrofit standard, addresses this systematically, and it is particularly well suited to Cheltenham because the most effective interventions happen on the inside. Internal wall insulation using breathable, lime-compatible systems allows the stone and stucco facades to continue performing as they always have — managing moisture, weathering gracefully — while the interior achieves a step-change in comfort. Secondary glazing behind the original sash windows preserves the Regency profiles that Cheltenham Borough Council's conservation officers rightly protect, while dramatically reducing heat loss. Airtightness detailing around the ornamental cornices and ceiling roses that are such a feature of these houses requires patience and precision, but the result — mechanical ventilation with heat recovery providing fresh air without thermal penalty — transforms how the house feels to live in. The street sees the same elegant facade it has always seen. The family inside feels the difference every morning they wake up.
Extension Design in Cheltenham demands a particular sensitivity to context. The thirty-two caryatids along Montpellier Walk, the colonnaded terraces of Pittville, the stuccoed elevations along Suffolk Square — the architectural language here is specific, confident and consistent. An extension to a Regency property cannot simply be a good piece of contemporary design; it must also demonstrate an understanding of the rhythms, materials and proportions that define its neighbours. Cheltenham Borough Council's conservation officers assess every application within the seven conservation areas against the detailed character appraisals that have been prepared for each, and the bar is high. A well-designed extension in this context is one that reads as a natural continuation of the building's logic — using materials that sit comfortably alongside the Leckhampton limestone, respecting the established building line, and achieving the additional space a family needs without competing with the existing elevation. Where a property sits outside the conservation area — in the Victorian and Edwardian suburbs to the south and east, for instance — there is often more freedom, but the design discipline remains the same.
What the Regency builders understood instinctively — orientation, proportion, the relationship between a building and the light it receives — is what Sustainable Design formalises with modern science. In Cheltenham, where the existing architecture already embodies a kind of durability that most new buildings struggle to match, sustainability means asking the same question those early nineteenth-century architects asked: what will last? Every project we take on, whether it is a renovation of a villa on Lansdown or a new home on the edge of town, is designed to use energy and materials as efficiently as possible. PassivHaus Design takes this to its highest expression, creating buildings that need almost no conventional heating — a standard we have designed to and lived in ourselves. New Build Design in Cheltenham must navigate a complex planning landscape; Cheltenham Borough Council, together with Gloucester City Council and Tewkesbury Borough Council, is preparing a new Strategic and Local Plan that will guide development across all three authority areas in the years ahead. Where the town gives way to the Cotswold escarpment rising to the east, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework offers a route to building an exceptional home in the countryside — but only where the architecture is demonstrably outstanding in its quality and its response to that landscape.
If you are considering a project in Cheltenham — whether it is bringing a Regency house into the twenty-first century, extending a family home in one of the town's distinctive neighbourhoods, or building something new that earns its place alongside what already exists — we would welcome the conversation.