There is an inscription inside the bell tower of St Bartholomew's Church in Churchdown that reads, roughly, "This belhouse was builded in the year of our Lord God, 1601." It is the kind of mark that speaks volumes about the people who made it — builders proud enough of their work to carve the date into stone, on a hilltop church that had already stood for over four centuries by the time they raised the tower. St Bartholomew's sits on Chosen Hill within the earthworks of an Iron Age fort, a Norman foundation from around 1175, and from the churchyard you can see the whole sweep of Churchdown spreading across the vale below — the older village core around Church Road, the mid-century estates, the newer developments edging south and west. It is a view that captures the full story of a town built in layers, and every layer demands a different kind of architectural thinking.
Award-winning Architects in Churchdown
Nearly Two Decades of Sustainable Architecture
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we are now based in Oxford, working with clients across the country. Over nearly two decades, the practice has grown around a central conviction: that sustainability is not a constraint on good design but the force that drives it. Our certified Passivhaus project, The Deerings in Hertfordshire, won the RIBA East Award in 2018, and The Old Water Tower was shortlisted for the RIBA South Award. I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards that same year, and in 2025 I served as a judge at the British Homes Awards. We are members of the Passivhaus Trust and The Green Register, and our work has been published in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine and The Modern House Journal. As a member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, I bring a particular care to projects where existing fabric — whether Norman stonework or a post-war cavity wall — needs to be understood before it can be improved. That dual fluency in heritage and performance is what defines us.
Architectural Services Shaped by Churchdown's Character
New Build Design is at the heart of what Churchdown needs right now. The South Churchdown Urban Extension, allocated through the Joint Core Strategy between Gloucester, Cheltenham and Tewkesbury Borough Council, is bringing significant new housing to land around Pirton Fields and the A40 corridor. Growth on this scale carries a responsibility: to build homes that respond to the landscape of the Severn Vale rather than ignoring it, that use materials with intention, and that perform to the energy standards this century demands. We approach every new build as an opportunity to create something that belongs to its setting — orientation, massing, materiality, all considered from the start rather than applied as afterthoughts. Sustainable Design is woven through this process from the earliest sketch, shaping decisions about where windows face, how the building breathes, and how little energy it needs to keep its occupants comfortable through every season.
Extension Design matters enormously in a town where much of the housing stock dates from the 1950s through to the 1980s. The estates that grew between the older village centre and the newer developments along Cheltenham Road East were designed for a different era — smaller kitchens, separate living rooms, modest proportions that no longer match how families live. A well-designed extension can transform a home without the upheaval of moving: opening a rear wall to connect kitchen and garden, adding a first-floor bedroom suite, or wrapping a side extension around to create the kind of open, light-filled living space that these houses were never built to offer. Tewkesbury Borough Council handles planning applications for Churchdown, and the Churchdown and Innsworth Neighbourhood Development Plan — adopted after referendum in 2020 — sets out local expectations for design quality that go beyond the standard policy framework. We welcome that kind of local ambition.
EnerPHit is the Passivhaus Institute's retrofit standard, and it suits the older housing in Churchdown particularly well. Many of the homes along Church Road, Parton Road and the streets around the village core were built with solid walls, single glazing and minimal insulation — comfortable enough in their day, but expensive and draughty now. EnerPHit takes a whole-house approach: upgrading the thermal envelope, improving airtightness, installing mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, so the building works as a coherent system rather than a patchwork of individual fixes. The result is a home that is warmer, quieter, and far cheaper to run — the kind of transformation that changes how people feel about a building they might otherwise have outgrown. PassivHaus Design applies the same physics to new construction, delivering homes that need almost no conventional heating and offer an internal environment of remarkable stillness and comfort.
Renovations in Churchdown range from updating interiors in the mid-century housing to more sensitive work near the historic core. Buildings like Ye Olde House on Sandfield Road — an early seventeenth-century structure of rubble stone and brick-nogged timber-framing — are reminders that this town's building traditions run deep, and that working with older fabric demands a particular kind of attention. My membership of SPAB shapes how we approach every renovation: understanding the building's history, reading its materials honestly, and making interventions that respect what is already there while giving the building a future it can sustain. Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route to building an exceptional new home in the countryside beyond Churchdown's settlement boundary, where the land rises toward Chosen Hill or opens out across the vale — a setting that requires architecture of genuine quality and landscape sensitivity to justify its place.
Churchdown is a town of contrasts — a Norman church on a hilltop, post-war estates on the plain, and new neighbourhoods taking shape along the A40. That range is what makes it interesting, and it is exactly the kind of place where considered, sustainable architecture can make a real difference. If you are planning a project in Churchdown, we would welcome the chance to talk.