Easton on the Hill is a village built from the ground it stands on. The blonde limestone that makes up its walls was quarried locally, and the Collyweston slate that covers its roofs was mined from the same Jurassic ridge — a roofing material so distinctive and so durable that the Romans recognised its qualities nearly two thousand years ago. A Roman-era slate survives in the Priest's House, a late fifteenth-century building now owned by the National Trust, which also houses a small museum of the local slate industry. That industry continued into the twentieth century before ceasing in the 1950s, but the material it produced endures on rooftops throughout the village and across the wider region. What interests me as an architect is the completeness of the relationship: the stone beneath the ground became the walls; the slate within the ridge became the roofs. Easton sits on the tableland south of the River Welland, between the Nene and Welland valleys, and its architecture is as much a geological fact as a design choice.
Award-winning Architects in Easton on the Hill
Certified Quality, Proven Range
The Deerings, a certified Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, won the RIBA East Award in 2018 — and that project captures the range of what we do. It demanded the same discipline with materials and environmental performance that heritage work requires, applied to a building designed for the lowest possible energy demand. I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we now work from Oxford with clients across the country. I am an ARB-registered and RIBA Chartered architect, a member of SPAB, the Passivhaus Trust and The Green Register. I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards, and in 2025 I was invited to judge the British Homes Awards. Our projects have been published in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine and The Modern House Journal. In a village like Easton on the Hill, where limestone walls and Collyweston slate roofs create an architecture inseparable from its geology, that understanding of materials is not optional — it is the foundation of any good intervention.
Architectural Services on the Jurassic Ridge
Renovations in Easton on the Hill engage with a building stock whose material quality is exceptional. The Church of All Saints, Grade I listed and dating from the twelfth century, anchors the village architecturally with its limestone walls and Collyweston slate roof. The Priest's House, built in the late fifteenth century with tree-ring dating placing the timbers between 1485 and 1499, demonstrates the craftsmanship that the slate industry supported. Some buildings in the conservation area display the characteristic Welland Valley feature of striped stonework — alternating bands of brown ironstone and Weldon stone — adding a further layer of local material expression. North Northamptonshire Council handles planning for the parish. Through my membership of SPAB, I approach these limestone and slate buildings with the understanding that each material has its own behaviour, and any renovation must work with it.
Extension Design in the conservation area must respect the material palette that gives Easton its distinctive character. Limestone walls and Collyweston slate roofs are not merely aesthetic — they are functional, and they belong to this place in a way that imported materials do not. An extension should respond to the proportions and materials of the existing building and the wider streetscape. Whether the brief is a ground-floor extension that opens the house to views across the Welland or Nene valleys, a garden room, or additional space above, the design should make the whole building feel more resolved while using materials that sit honestly alongside what is already there.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, addresses the thermal performance of older homes without compromising their material character. The limestone houses of Easton present the familiar challenge of solid-walled construction: thick walls with no insulation, draughty junctions, and a building envelope designed for ventilation rather than thermal retention. Vapour-open insulation, careful airtightness detailing, and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery can transform them — warmer, quieter, dramatically cheaper to run — while the limestone walls and Collyweston slate roofs continue to function as they always have.
Sustainable Design connects every project we take on, and in Easton on the Hill it connects to a material tradition that has sustained itself for centuries. Collyweston slate, properly laid and maintained, will outlast almost any modern roofing material — and the limestone walls beneath it improve with age, their surface acquiring the patina that only weathering can produce. That is sustainable building at its most fundamental: using materials that last, sourced from the ground beneath your feet. PassivHaus Design sets our benchmark for new construction, delivering certified comfort with minimal energy demand. New Build Design in the conservation area should respect the limestone and slate character that defines the village. For sites in the countryside around the parish, where the Jurassic ridge creates the landscape and the geology that made the village possible, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route to architecturally outstanding homes — but the design must be worthy of a place that has been building with its own stone for two millennia.
Easton on the Hill is built from its own ground. If you are considering a project here, we would welcome the conversation.