Dandridge's Mill in East Hanney was built in the 1820s as a silk mill on the Letcombe Brook — a Georgian building designed around the logic of water power and the demands of a single trade. When the silk industry collapsed, the mill became a grain mill. During the Second World War it produced parts for Mosquito bombers. After years of dereliction it was restored in 2007 as private apartments. Four lives for one building, each one a response to what the moment required, and through every transformation the structure held. That is the kind of pragmatism I find compelling in a village like East Hanney — not preservation for its own sake, but the instinct to keep a good building working, to find new purpose for strong bones.
Award-winning Architects in East Hanney
Why Homeowners in East Hanney Trust Gresford Architects
Gresford Architects is an ARB-registered and RIBA Chartered practice, founded in London in 2006 and now based at the Oxford Eco Centre. We are accredited on The Green Register and members of the Passivhaus Trust — affiliations that reflect a commitment to buildings that perform as well as they look. Our project The Deerings, a Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, won a RIBA East Award in 2018, and in the same year I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards. My wife Phoebe is a conservation architect, and through her work I have developed a deepened respect for the craft of reading old buildings — understanding where they have been altered, where they have been patched, and where they still carry the marks of their original makers. That sensibility matters in a village where converted barns sit alongside Georgian brick and the occasional flash of medieval stonework. We are members of SPAB, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and our work has been published in Dezeen, The Modern House Journal and Grand Designs Magazine. In 2025 I served as a judge for the British Homes Awards.
Designing for a Village Shaped by the Letcombe Brook
East Hanney falls within the Vale of White Horse District Council for planning purposes. The village has two conservation areas — an unusual distinction for a settlement of this size — the larger running in a linear configuration through the heart of the village. Around thirty listed buildings are recorded in East Hanney, from Philberd's Manor on Halls Lane with its red brick and Flemish bond to Grange Farmhouse and the converted agricultural buildings along the main street. The East Hanney Neighbourhood Plan, covering 2021 to 2031, sets clear design policies that require new development to reinforce local character. The village sits in a lowland vale landscape surrounded by agricultural land, and the Letcombe Brook — the watercourse that first drew settlement here — still runs through the parish, shaping the feel and the flood risk of the plots alongside it.
Extension Design in East Hanney demands a careful reading of context. The village has grown organically over centuries, leaving a pattern of modest plots set close together, many of them within or adjoining one of the two conservation areas. An extension here is never just a question of floor area — it is a question of proportion, of how a new roof meets an old one, of whether brick or render or timber cladding is the honest response to what is already there. We design extensions that take their cue from the building they serve and the lane they face, respecting the grain of the village while making homes more functional for the way people live now.
Sustainable Design runs through everything we do, and in East Hanney it connects to a landscape where water, soil and building material have always been closely linked. The Letcombe Brook provided the power for Dandridge's Mill and the irrigation for the orchards and paddocks that once surrounded the village. A fabric-first approach to architecture — prioritising insulation, airtightness and natural ventilation over mechanical systems — is simply the contemporary expression of that same instinct to work with what the place gives you, not against it.
Renovations in East Hanney demand the same pragmatism that kept Dandridge's Mill standing through four different lives. Across the parish, farmsteads and barns have been converted to residential use over the decades, and listed buildings like Grange Farmhouse carry centuries of alteration — stone patched with brick, thatch replaced with tile, rooms added as families expanded and agricultural use gave way to domestic life. A good renovation reads those layers before it adds another, understanding what each generation changed and why, then making the building comfortable, efficient and ready for the next chapter without erasing its record of change.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, offers a rigorous route to improving thermal performance in older homes without erasing their character. Many of the older properties in East Hanney have solid walls that are beautiful but thermally inefficient — the kind of construction where heat loss in winter is a constant presence. EnerPHit addresses this through careful internal insulation, improved airtightness and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, transforming comfort and energy bills while leaving the external fabric untouched.
New Build Design, where the Neighbourhood Plan and Local Plan allocations permit, should draw from East Hanney's rich mix of materials and forms rather than defaulting to a single style. The village's character comes precisely from its variety — stone, brick, render and tile layered across centuries of building — and new homes have an opportunity to contribute to that tradition rather than flatten it. PassivHaus Design takes this further still: homes that are not only kinder to the planet but more comfortable to inhabit, more economical to run and more joyful to live in. For sites beyond the village boundary in the open countryside, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route for truly exceptional homes — innovative in design, reflecting the highest standards, and significantly enhancing their immediate setting.
East Hanney is a village that has never stopped adapting — its mill, its barns, its farmhouses all finding new lives as the world around them changed. If you are considering a project here, whether it is extending a family home within one of the conservation areas, renovating a building that carries generations of alteration, or creating something new that earns its place alongside what is already here, we would welcome the conversation.