The priory church at Edington was begun in 1352 and consecrated just nine years later — a single, coherent building that has stood largely unaltered since the masons set down their tools in 1361. That is extraordinary. Most medieval churches were built in stages over centuries, their fabric a palimpsest of changing tastes and available funds. Edington's Church of St Mary, St Katharine and All Saints is different: the work of one campaign, commissioned by William of Edington, Bishop of Winchester, who chose his birthplace as the site for a house of the Bonhommes, an Augustinian order. The result is one of the finest examples in England of the transition from Decorated to Perpendicular Gothic, its cruciform plan measuring some 154 feet long beneath a tower of 67 feet. What draws me to this village beneath the northern escarpment of Salisbury Plain is what that church represents — architecture conceived with clarity, built with care, and still performing its purpose nearly seven centuries later. The best buildings are not those that shout loudest but those that endure.
Award-winning Architects in Edington
A Practice Built on Heritage Sensitivity and Sustainable Craft
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we now work from Oxford with clients across the country. I am a RIBA Chartered and ARB Registered Architect, a member of SPAB — the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings — and accredited by The Green Register. I hold membership of the Passivhaus Trust and bring that dual focus on conservation and energy performance to every project. In a village like Edington, where a Grade I listed priory church stands alongside Grade II listed buildings such as Beckett's House — a timber-framed and stone structure dating from around 1600 — and Shore House, a late sixteenth-century timber-framed dwelling, you need an architect who reads fabric before drawing lines. Our certified Passivhaus project The Deerings won the RIBA East Award in 2018, and I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards the same year. I have judged the British Homes Awards and our work has been published in Dezeen, The Modern House Journal and Grand Designs Magazine. My wife Phoebe is a conservation architect, and her influence sharpened something I already believed — that the care you bring to an old building and the rigour you bring to energy performance are expressions of the same discipline.
How We Work with Homes in Edington
Extension Design in Edington requires a careful reading of the village's existing character. The older buildings along Tinhead Road — Shore House with its oversailing timber frame, Beckett's House with its stone rear range enclosing an earlier timber structure — establish a material language of local stone, render and clay tiles that any new addition must respect. Edington sits within the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs National Landscape, and Wiltshire Council applies heightened scrutiny to proposals that affect the conservation area or the setting of listed buildings. We design extensions that deliver the space, light and thermal comfort that contemporary life demands while drawing their proportions and materials from the specific context of this village — not a generic countryside aesthetic but one rooted in what Edington already is.
Renovations here often involve buildings with several centuries of adaptation already layered into their fabric. The George Inn, an early eighteenth-century coaching inn on Tinhead Road that once served coaches running between Salisbury and Bath, is typical of the kind of building where each generation has left its mark — brick additions, altered openings, reroofed sections. My SPAB training teaches an approach grounded in understanding what is already there before proposing change: how the building moves moisture, where it has been strengthened or weakened by previous interventions, and what it needs to continue performing for another century. Sustainable Design begins with this respect for existing fabric — the most sustainable building is one that already exists and is maintained well.
EnerPHit provides a certified pathway for upgrading the thermal performance of older homes in Edington without compromising their external character. Many of the village's homes have solid walls — stone or timber-framed, some with centuries-old timber frames still hidden behind later render — that perform poorly by modern thermal standards. These walls are hygroscopic; they manage moisture through their fabric in ways that modern vapour barriers would obstruct. We detail every junction carefully, from window reveals to eaves, ensuring that airtightness and insulation work with the building's existing moisture behaviour rather than against it. The result is a home that is dramatically warmer, quieter and cheaper to run, while the conservation area sees no visible change.
New Build Design opportunities in Edington are limited by the conservation area and the National Landscape designation, but where they arise, a new home should demonstrate the same commitment to place that the village's best buildings already show. PassivHaus Design achieves near-zero energy demand through exceptional insulation, airtightness and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery — a standard of comfort and efficiency that honours the principle of building to last. Beyond the village, the chalk downland of Salisbury Plain rising to the south offers scope for Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework, a route for truly exceptional new homes in the open countryside whose design quality justifies their position in an otherwise protected landscape.
If you are considering a project in Edington — whether extending a home on Tinhead Road, improving the energy performance of an older property, or renovating a building with centuries of adaptation in its walls — we would welcome a conversation about how to approach it well.