Coleford's town centre was burned during the Civil War. On 20 February 1643, Royalist and Parliamentarian forces clashed in the streets, the market house was set alight, and the medieval heart of the settlement was largely destroyed. What you see today — the Georgian facades of the town centre conservation area, the orderly stone frontages along the main streets — grew from that destruction. The clock tower in the market place, Coleford's most recognisable landmark, is itself a survivor of a different kind: the last standing fragment of an octagonal church built in 1820 and demolished just sixty years later when the congregation outgrew it. For an architect, there is something instructive in a town that has rebuilt itself so completely and so well. The buildings that define Coleford now were not the first ones here, and the way they sit — confident, proportioned, rooted in local stone — says as much about the act of rebuilding as it does about what was lost.
Award-winning Architects in Coleford
An Architect's Practice Shaped by Place and Process
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we are now based in Oxford, working with clients across the country. A town like Coleford — where Georgian stone buildings sit within a conservation area, where Forest of Dean District Council expects proposals to respect a layered industrial and architectural heritage, and where the landscape of the Forest itself presses close on every side — asks for an architect who understands both the discipline of historic context and the ambition of good contemporary design. I am a chartered RIBA architect and ARB registered, a member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and The Green Register, and accredited by the Passivhaus Trust. Our project The Deerings in Hertfordshire — a Passivhaus new build that won the RIBA East Award in 2018 — showed what is possible when environmental performance and genuine architectural quality are treated as the same goal. That year I was also a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards, and in 2025 I served as a judge for the British Homes Awards. Our work has been featured in Dezeen, The Modern House Journal and Grand Designs Magazine. But what resonates most in a place like Coleford is not the list of credentials — it is the conviction that good architecture begins with understanding where you are building, what came before, and what the place genuinely needs.
Architectural Services for Homes in Coleford
Sustainable Design is the thread that runs through all of our work at Gresford Architects, and in Coleford it finds a natural context. This is a town built on carboniferous limestone, surrounded by the Forest of Dean — a landscape where the relationship between geology, materials and building has been direct for centuries. The local sandstone and limestone that give the conservation area its character are expressions of that connection between ground and structure. We approach every project with the same instinct: work with what the site and its surroundings offer, reduce energy demand through intelligent orientation and fabric-first design, and create homes that are comfortable, economical and designed to last. Sustainability here is not a label applied after the fact — it is the starting point, shaping every decision from massing to material choice.
New Build Design in Coleford is shaped by the tension between conservation and growth. Within the town centre, the conservation area and the density of listed buildings — forty-two across the parish, alongside three scheduled ancient monuments — mean that opportunities are constrained and expectations are high. Forest of Dean District Council will want any new building to sit comfortably alongside the Georgian stone terraces that define the centre. Beyond the town, new housing sites are coming forward, and the challenge shifts: how to build homes that belong in this landscape rather than simply occupying it. We bring a commitment to material honesty, environmental performance and site-specific design that treats every new building as an opportunity to contribute something genuine to a place. The Deerings demonstrates what that ambition looks like in practice — Passivhaus certification, RIBA recognition, and a home that feels settled in its setting from the first day.
EnerPHit is particularly relevant for the older buildings that give Coleford its Georgian character. Stone-built homes from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are often beautiful, solid and cold — thick walls that feel permanent but perform poorly by modern thermal standards. The Passivhaus Institute's EnerPHit standard provides a rigorous, certified route to transforming their performance without compromising the external appearance that the conservation area protects. Careful internal insulation, improved airtightness, and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery can turn a draughty stone house into a home that is warm, quiet and economical to run. We have lived in a home designed to Passivhaus standards, so we understand this transformation not as theory but as daily reality — the difference between enduring a building and genuinely enjoying it.
Extension Design in Coleford often means working within the constraints of the conservation area and the expectations of Forest of Dean District Council. Many homes in the town centre sit on plots that reflect an earlier pattern of development — the kind of sites where a thoughtful rear extension, a garden room, or a reconfigured ground floor can transform how a family uses their home without disrupting the streetscape. The discipline of working within these constraints, handled well, tends to produce better architecture than unconstrained freedom. Renovations in Coleford carry their own particular interest. The town's industrial past — the iron and coal that powered its growth, the Mushet family's experiments with steel at Darkhill and Whitecliff that helped revolutionise metallurgy — left buildings that range from modest workers' cottages to more substantial Victorian houses. Each tells a story about the town's evolution, and good renovation work reads those layers rather than erasing them. PassivHaus Design takes the principles of sustainability to their most rigorous standard, delivering homes that need almost no conventional heating — an approach that makes particular sense in a Forest town where winters can be damp and energy costs weigh heavily. For sites in the wider landscape beyond Coleford, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework offers a route to exceptional new homes in rural locations where development would not normally be permitted — but only where the design is genuinely outstanding. The Forest of Dean, with its ancient woodland, deep valleys and long views toward the Wye, demands architecture that responds to its particular character rather than imposing something borrowed from elsewhere.
Coleford is a town that knows what it means to rebuild — from the ashes of Civil War destruction to the Georgian stone that replaced it, from the industrial ambition of the Mushets to the quieter rhythms of the market town it has become. Whether you are extending a Georgian home within the conservation area, improving the thermal comfort of a stone-built cottage, planning a new build on one of the sites emerging around the town, or imagining something exceptional in the Forest landscape beyond, we would welcome the conversation.