In 2018, archaeologists from Cotswold Archaeology excavated a site north of the A417 at East Challow and found something remarkable beneath the topsoil: the remains of an early Anglo-Saxon settlement, sixteen sunken-featured buildings and two possible timber halls, complete with loomweights, bone combs, and spindle whorls. A whole community, living and working on the same ground that people in East Challow walk across today. I find that kind of continuity compelling. The village has been shaped by every generation that has passed through it — from the Roman villa site near Cornhill Farm to the Norman church of St Nicolas, from the Wilts and Berks Canal that cut through the parish in 1810 to the Nalder and Nalder ironworks that brought industrial purpose to a quiet agricultural settlement from 1857. East Challow is not a grand place. It is a mile west of Wantage, modest in scale, and easy to overlook. But it is layered in a way that rewards attention, and that is the kind of place where architecture can do its most thoughtful work.
Award-winning Architects in East Challow
An Award-winning Practice for Projects in East Challow
We founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006 and are now based at the Oxford Eco Centre in Osney Mead, working regularly with clients across the Vale of White Horse. I am an ARB-registered, RIBA Chartered architect, a member of the Passivhaus Trust and The Green Register, and our work is shaped by a commitment to sustainability that runs through every project, from a single-room extension to a full Passivhaus new build. Our RIBA East Award for The Deerings — a Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire — recognised the kind of rigorous, energy-efficient design that defines the practice. I was shortlisted for the RIBA South Awards for The Old Water Tower and named a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the 2018 Building Design Awards. Our projects have been featured in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine, and The Modern House Journal, and in 2025 I was invited to judge the British Homes Awards. My wife Phoebe is a conservation architect, and through our membership of SPAB we bring a deep understanding of older buildings to every project that involves them.
How We Work in East Challow
East Challow falls within the planning area of Vale of White Horse District Council, and the village adopted its own Neighbourhood Plan in 2023, which now carries full weight in planning decisions through to 2031. The plan provides a framework for how the village grows while protecting the qualities that make it worth living in — a mix of older properties, open countryside, and the kind of quiet, connected community that larger towns cannot replicate.
New Build Design in East Challow is shaped by that context. The village sits in the broad, open landscape of the Vale, with views toward the chalk downs to the south and flat agricultural land stretching north. A new house here needs to respond to the scale and character of what already exists — the mix of brick and render, the modest proportions, the relationship between buildings and the fields beyond. Sustainable Design is woven through every new build we design, because a house that works with its environment rather than against it is a house that will serve its owners well for decades. PassivHaus Design takes that principle to its highest standard: homes that are extraordinarily comfortable, use almost no energy for heating, and cost a fraction of conventional houses to run. We designed and lived in our own Passivhaus — it is not abstract for us.
The older properties in East Challow — the Grade II* church of St Nicolas with its twelfth-century origins, the Grade II listed Hill Farmhouse on Faringdon Road, and houses throughout the village — are buildings whose fabric has a memory. Renovations require an architect who understands how historic materials behave and what they are trying to tell you. These buildings were not designed for modern comfort, but they can be brought into the twenty-first century without losing the qualities that make them worth preserving. EnerPHit is the Passivhaus standard for retrofit, and it offers a methodical, evidence-based route to transforming a draughty older home into something warm, quiet, and energy-efficient while respecting its character. Extension Design for homes in East Challow needs to balance what the existing house asks for with what the Neighbourhood Plan and the planning authority expect — additions that sit well, use appropriate materials, and feel like a natural part of the building rather than an afterthought.
Beyond the village, the open countryside of the Vale of White Horse occasionally presents sites where Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework applies. This is the policy route for truly exceptional homes in rural locations — houses whose design quality is so high that it becomes the justification for building in a place where development would not normally be permitted. It demands architecture that is genuinely outstanding, and that is the kind of challenge we welcome.
East Challow is a village with deep roots and a clear sense of what it wants to be. If you are planning a project here — whether that is a new home, an extension, a renovation, or something more ambitious — we would be glad to hear from you.