Inside the Church of St Peter, built into the chancel wall, there is a ninth-century cross shaft carved from oolitic limestone. It shows a figure in a cloak, dancing — a rattle in one hand, a sprig of alder in the other. The carving was rediscovered during restoration work in 1864, having been hidden within the masonry for centuries. It is one of those moments that reminds you what architecture really is: not just shelter, but a record of how people have lived, what they have valued, what they have chosen to keep. Codford St Peter sits in the Wylye Valley, seven miles southeast of Warminster, and its buildings carry that same sense of accumulated time — the late seventeenth-century Old Manor House with its banded rubble stone and thatch, the twelfth-century font in the church carved with stars and crosses, the early nineteenth-century Wool House with its stuccoed walls and deep-eaved slate roof. Each generation has added something, adapted something, left its mark. When we design for homes in Codford St Peter, that layered history is not a constraint. It is the conversation we are joining.
Award-winning Architects in Codford St Peter
Why Homeowners in Codford St Peter Trust Gresford Architects
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006 and we are now based in Oxford, working with clients across the country on projects where craft, sustainability and sensitivity to place come together. I am a RIBA Chartered and ARB Registered Architect, and my membership of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings shapes the way we approach older fabric — the rubble stone walls, lime mortars and timber structures that define villages like Codford St Peter. Our work on The Old Water Tower, shortlisted for the RIBA South Awards, tested how far a heritage structure can be reimagined while preserving its essential logic. The Deerings, a certified Passivhaus in Hertfordshire, won the RIBA East Award and showed that rigorous energy performance and considered design reinforce one another. I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards in 2018 and served as a judge for the British Homes Awards in 2025. Our projects have been featured in Dezeen, The Modern House Journal and Grand Designs Magazine. Accredited by The Green Register and a member of the Passivhaus Trust, I see sustainability not as a technical exercise but as a way to create homes that are more comfortable, more economical to run and more rewarding to inhabit.
Architectural Services for Homes in Codford St Peter
Renovations in Codford St Peter mean reading the fabric carefully. The village has twenty-four listed buildings, and their construction tells the story of what was available and how it was worked — the banded rubble stone and thatch of the Old Manor House, the dressed limestone of the High Street cottages dating from around 1700, the stucco and Welsh slate of the Wool House. Working with Wiltshire Council as planning authority, we approach each renovation by understanding the structural logic of what already stands: how lime mortars flex, how rubble walls distribute load, how thatch breathes above the rooms it protects. My SPAB training grounds that approach in respect for how buildings actually work over centuries, not merely how they look from the lane.
EnerPHit provides a rigorous retrofit pathway for homes in Codford St Peter that were never designed for modern thermal comfort. The Wylye Valley's chalk and greensand geology shaped the materials the village was built from, and those materials behave in specific ways when you introduce insulation. Rubble stone walls absorb and release moisture through the seasons; seal them incorrectly and you trap damp within the fabric. EnerPHit work here demands internal insulation detailed carefully around openings, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery calibrated to support the building's existing moisture logic, and airtightness strategies that respect the thresholds, window reveals and timber lintels of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century construction. The result is a home that is measurably warmer and cheaper to heat, while the streetscape remains exactly as it was.
Codford St Peter lies within the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs National Landscape, and Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework offers a route for truly outstanding homes in the open countryside beyond the village. The chalk downland rises above the Wylye Valley floor here, and designing on these slopes means working with the landform — orientation, shelter, views to the south and east — rather than imposing upon it. The ANZAC badge carved into the chalk of Lamb Down in 1916 is a reminder of how visibly the landscape registers human intervention; any new home in this setting must demonstrate that it genuinely enhances the place. Sustainable Design runs through every project we undertake, and in a National Landscape it carries additional weight: energy strategy, material selection and ecological impact all need to work in concert. New Build Design within the village itself means responding to what Codford St Peter already is — the modest proportions along the High Street, the variety of stone, render and thatch, the way buildings sit close to the road. Extension Design asks how to add to a home built from rubble stone or clad in stucco without diminishing what is already there, and the answer always starts with understanding the existing building's proportions, materials and relationship to its neighbours. PassivHaus Design takes the principles of comfort, efficiency and durability to their highest standard for new construction — virtually eliminating the need for conventional heating through exceptional airtightness, insulation and heat recovery.
If you are considering a project in Codford St Peter — whether restoring one of the village's listed buildings, improving the thermal performance of a Wylye Valley home, or building something new that belongs in this layered landscape — we would welcome a conversation about what is possible.