There is a cottage at 69 High Street in Drayton that has stood since the fifteenth century, its cruck frame still doing exactly what its builders intended. Cruck construction is one of those honest, elegant solutions that I admire as an architect — two curved timbers rising from the ground to the ridge, carrying the weight of the roof in one continuous gesture. It is the kind of building that teaches you something about working with materials rather than against them, about letting the timber's natural form dictate the structure. Drayton has been shaped by that instinct for centuries, from the rubble stone walls of its older farmsteads to the careful proportions of its conservation area core, and it is a place where architecture still matters in an immediate, practical way.
Award-winning Architects in Drayton
An Architect's Practice Built on Conservation and Sustainability
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006 and later moved the practice to Oxford, where we work from the Eco Centre in Osney Mead — less than three miles from Drayton. The village's fifteenth-century cruck cottages, its rubble stone farmsteads and the conservation area around the parish church of St Peter are exactly the kind of buildings we have spent nearly two decades learning to work with: historic, material-honest, and demanding of architects who understand how they actually function. I am RIBA Chartered and ARB Registered, a member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the Passivhaus Trust and The Green Register — qualifications that reflect the range of what this village asks of its architect.
Our RIBA East Award for The Deerings, a certified Passivhaus in Hertfordshire, showed that rigorous energy performance and genuine architectural quality belong together. The Old Water Tower, shortlisted for a RIBA South Award, demonstrated how a heritage building can be reimagined without losing the character that makes it worth saving. I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the 2018 Building Design Awards and served as a judge at the British Homes Awards in 2025. Dezeen featured our Ritson Road extension in Hackney, and The Modern House Journal and The Spaces profiled The Old Orchard, our EnerPHit retrofit in Oxfordshire. That breadth of experience — heritage, sustainability, new build, retrofit — is what a village like Drayton needs from its architect.
Architectural Services Shaped by Drayton's Character
Drayton falls under Vale of White Horse District Council for planning, and the village's conservation area — centred on the oldest part of the settlement around the church, Manor House and High Street — adds a layer of scrutiny to any project within or adjacent to it. The older buildings here are constructed from rubble stone, with ashlar dressings on the grander structures, and any work in this context needs to understand both the materials and the planning framework that protects them.
Extension Design is often the starting point for homeowners in Drayton. The cottages along High Street, the converted farmsteads that line the lanes off the village core, the Manor House itself with its fifteenth-century range and later additions — these were built for a different rhythm of life, and families today need more space, more light, more connection to the garden. A well-considered extension can deliver all of that while respecting the proportions, materials and rooflines of the original building. In a conservation area built from rubble stone, that means matching coursework, understanding how a stone wall meets a new opening, and designing something that reads as a natural continuation rather than an interruption.
Renovations in Drayton demand an architect who reads buildings as carefully as drawings. The rubble stone walls here have survived since medieval times by managing moisture through their mass and breathability — lime mortar, not modern cement, and no cavity barriers. My membership of SPAB shapes how we approach these properties: understanding that logic first, then improving comfort, light and spatial flow without undermining the construction methods that have proven themselves over centuries. A cruck-framed cottage and an ashlar-dressed manor house are very different buildings, but both reward an architect who takes the time to understand how they work before proposing how they should change.
For the solid stone properties in Drayton's conservation area, EnerPHit provides a rigorous retrofit pathway. These walls cannot take conventional cavity insulation, so EnerPHit coordinates internal or external insulation, airtightness detailing, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery and high-performance glazing into a whole-building strategy. The result is a home that is warm, quiet and economical to run — comfortable, designed to last and to use energy and materials as efficiently as possible — without trapping moisture in the very walls that give it its character.
Sustainable Design is not a layer we add to a project in Drayton — it is the starting point. The village's own buildings teach the principle: cruck timber frames that carry loads with minimal waste, stone walls that last centuries without mechanical intervention. We design the same way, creating homes that use less energy, generate less waste and last as long as the buildings already standing around them.
Drayton's Neighbourhood Plan has allocated sites for new housing, and that growth brings opportunity. New Build Design allows us to design homes from first principles — orientation, daylighting, thermal performance, spatial flow — unconstrained by the compromises of an existing structure. PassivHaus Design takes this further, achieving certified comfort with minimal energy demand through a fabric-first approach that will outlast any technology cycle. And for those with land in the open countryside beyond the village boundary, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework offers a route for truly outstanding or innovative homes where the design genuinely enhances its rural setting.
If you are considering an extension, renovation or new build in Drayton, we would welcome the conversation. This is a village that has always understood how to build well with what the land provides — from cruck timber to rubble stone — and that instinct for honest, considered architecture is one we share.