Driving the A4 east of Calne, the chalk escarpment of Cherhill Down rises suddenly above the road — the White Horse cut into the hillside in 1780, the Lansdowne Monument standing on the skyline like an exclamation mark, and the ancient earthworks of Oldbury Castle crowning the ridge. It is a landscape that announces itself. But drop down into the village below and the character shifts entirely: chalk-and-thatch cottages line the Street and Middle Lane, mostly one-and-a-half storeys, built from the same ground they sit on. The chalk that forms the escarpment was quarried and shaped into blocks for the walls of these houses. There is something deeply satisfying about that — a village literally made from its own landscape. For an architect, Cherhill is a reminder that the best buildings have always begun with what the ground beneath them offers.
Award-winning Architects in Cherhill
A Practice Built on Sustainability and Craft
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and the practice is now based in Oxford. I trained at the Mackintosh School of Architecture in Glasgow, where I developed a deep conviction that good design begins with understanding materials, place and climate — not imposing a style upon them. We are RIBA Chartered and ARB Registered, members of the Passivhaus Trust and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and accredited by The Green Register. Our work on The Deerings, a Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, won a RIBA East Award, and The Old Water Tower was shortlisted for the RIBA South Awards. I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the 2018 Building Design Awards and served as a judge for the British Homes Awards in 2025. Our projects have been published in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine, The Modern House Journal and the RIBA Journal. We work with clients across the country, bringing the same care to a chalk-country village as to a city terrace.
Designing for a Village Beneath the Downs
Extension Design in Cherhill is shaped by the conservation area — the eastern part designated in 1993, extended westward in 1998 — and by the particular materials tradition of the village. Many of the older properties here follow a lobby-entrance plan in chalk block with thatched roofs, and any extension needs to understand that vocabulary before introducing something new. Wiltshire Council, as the local planning authority, will assess proposals within the conservation area for their impact on the character and appearance of the village, and the setting within the North Wessex Downs National Landscape adds a further layer of landscape sensitivity. We prepare planning applications that anticipate these considerations from the earliest sketch, ensuring that an extension feels like a natural continuation of the building rather than an afterthought.
Renovations here demand particular care with chalk block construction. Chalk is a soft, porous material — it breathes, it absorbs moisture, and it responds badly to cement renders or impermeable coatings that trap dampness within the wall. A building like Tudor Cottage on Park Lane, a listed timber-framed hall thought to be among the oldest structures in the village, requires an architect who understands historic fabric at a forensic level. My membership of SPAB shapes this approach: we work with the logic of the original building, using lime mortars and breathable finishes, ensuring that each intervention supports rather than undermines the structure's long-term health. The Church of St James, with its twelfth-century chancel and nave and its late fifteenth-century tower, is a reminder that good materials and good craft can endure for centuries when treated with respect.
Sustainable Design is central to everything we do at Gresford Architects, and in a village like Cherhill it takes on a particular resonance. These chalk-and-thatch cottages were, in their way, an early form of sustainable building — local materials, low embodied energy, walls that regulate moisture naturally. Our approach builds on that principle with modern science: careful orientation, natural ventilation, high-performance glazing and insulation that works with the building rather than against it. The result is homes that are more comfortable, more economical to run and more joyful to inhabit. EnerPHit applies this thinking as a certified retrofit standard, transforming the thermal performance of older solid-walled homes without compromising the character that makes them worth keeping. For the chalk block cottages in Cherhill, where walls are thick but thermally inefficient, an EnerPHit approach can dramatically reduce heat loss while maintaining the breathability the structure needs.
PassivHaus Design delivers the highest certified standard of energy performance for new homes — exceptional airtightness, minimal energy demand, and a building that maintains comfortable temperatures year-round with almost no mechanical heating. New Build Design offers the freedom to achieve these standards from the ground up, and any new development in Cherhill would need to respond to both the conservation area and the wider landscape setting of the North Wessex Downs. For sites in the open countryside around the downs, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route for a dwelling of truly exceptional architectural quality — a home justified not by housing allocation but by the quality of its design and its relationship to this chalk landscape.
If you are considering a project in Cherhill — whether extending a chalk-and-thatch cottage, renovating a historic building within the conservation area, or exploring a new home on the edge of the downs — we would welcome the conversation.