Most villages reveal themselves gradually, a building at a time, as you walk their lanes. Frampton on Severn does the opposite. Twenty-two acres of open green — reputedly the longest village green in England — lay the whole settlement out before you in a single, generous view. On one side stands Frampton Court, a Palladian house of the early 1730s attributed to the Bristol architect John Strahan, its symmetrical ashlar facade and ionic pilasters as precise and formal as anything you would find in Bath. Directly across the green sits Manor Farmhouse, five centuries older in its earliest parts, its upper floor close-studded timber framing with S-shape bracing speaking a completely different architectural language. Two Grade I listed buildings, facing one another across the same open ground, separated by three hundred years of craft and ambition. For an architect, that kind of contrast is thrilling — and it tells you immediately that working in Frampton on Severn means understanding how buildings from very different periods can share a landscape without diminishing one another.
Award-winning Architects in Frampton on Severn
Trusted Expertise for Heritage and Sustainable Architecture
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we are now based in Oxford, working with clients across the country. Our work sits at the intersection of heritage sensitivity and energy performance — two disciplines that, brought together well, produce buildings that are comfortable, economical to run, and a joy to inhabit. The Deerings, a Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, won the RIBA East Award in 2018, and we were shortlisted for the RIBA South Awards for The Old Water Tower in 2016. I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards in 2018. As a member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, accredited with The Green Register, and a member of the Passivhaus Trust, I bring a framework to every project that treats sustainability and heritage not as competing priorities but as the same commitment — making buildings that last, use resources wisely, and respect the places they belong to.
Architectural Services for Homes in Frampton on Severn
Renovations in Frampton on Severn begin with the recognition that this village holds an extraordinary concentration of historic fabric. The conservation area, first designated in 1975 and reviewed with a formal Conservation Area Statement adopted in 2008, includes buildings that range from fifteenth-century cruck-framed cottages to the Georgian formality of Frampton Court. Manor Farmhouse alone contains an early fifteenth-century core with cruck-trusses, a sixteenth-century timber-framed wing, and an ashlar ground floor — a single building that embodies three centuries of construction technique. Renovating a property like this, or any of the older homes around the green, requires the patience to understand how each layer was built and how it behaves structurally before proposing any change. That careful, forensic approach to existing buildings is central to how we work, and it is why Stroud District Council's planning requirements for the conservation area — including the Article 4 Direction that controls alterations to residential buildings — align naturally with our methods rather than constraining them.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's standard for retrofit, is particularly relevant here. Timber-framed buildings with wattle-and-daub infill breathe in ways that a modern cavity wall does not, and sealing them carelessly with impermeable insulation risks trapping moisture inside the frame — damage that takes years to become visible and decades to reverse. An EnerPHit retrofit works differently: improving airtightness with precision, introducing mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, and selecting insulation materials suited to the building's existing moisture behaviour. The result is a home that is warmer, quieter, and far cheaper to heat, without sacrificing the character that earned its conservation area or listed status. In a village where the Wool Barn at Manor Farm — a Grade I listed seven-bay structure from the mid-to-late sixteenth century — stands as a reminder of the quality of historic timber construction, getting the retrofit strategy right is not optional.
Extension Design for homes in Frampton on Severn calls for a response that honours both the host building and the extraordinary setting it occupies. An extension to a cottage on the green will be visible across twenty-two acres of open space, which means its scale, roofline, and materials are not just matters of personal taste — they are part of a public composition that has been evolving for centuries. Stroud District Council will rightly scrutinise any proposal within the conservation area to ensure it preserves or enhances the area's character, and the best extensions are those that make the case effortlessly, their proportions and detailing in genuine conversation with the existing building. Whether the host property is a stone-built Georgian house or a timber-framed cottage with a stone slate roof, the extension should feel like a natural continuation of the building's own logic, not an imposition from outside.
Sustainable Design runs through every service we offer. New Build Design in Frampton on Severn must respect the grain of a village that has grown slowly over six centuries, responding to the scale of the green and the material traditions — ashlar, timber, stone slate — that give this place its coherence. PassivHaus Design offers the most rigorous framework we know for homes that are comfortable, efficient, and built to last well beyond their first occupants. For the open farmland and Severn floodplain surrounding the village, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route for exceptional residential architecture in genuinely rural settings, though any new building here will need to demonstrate a quality of design that justifies its presence in a countryside as flat and open as the Severn Vale.
Frampton on Severn is a village where architecture announces itself openly — Grade I listed buildings facing each other across England's longest green, centuries of craft on display in timber, stone, and ashlar. If you are considering a project here, whether it involves restoring what already exists or adding something thoughtfully new, we would welcome the conversation.