At the junction of three roads in the centre of Geddington stands one of the most remarkable pieces of medieval stonework in England. The Eleanor Cross, erected in the mid-1290s to mark one of the resting places of Queen Eleanor of Castile's funeral cortege, is the best preserved of only three surviving from the twelve that Edward I commissioned between Lincoln and London. It rises nearly thirteen metres — a triangular plan of stepped base, canopied niches holding three statues of the queen, and a hexagonal spire of crocketed pinnacles — and it has stood there for over seven hundred years, weathering slowly in the same limestone from which the village around it is built. What strikes me as an architect is not just the quality of the carving, which is extraordinary, but the fact that this object has endured because people have cared for it — repairing, protecting, ensuring it survives. That is conservation in its most literal sense, and it is the principle that should guide every intervention in a village of this significance.
Award-winning Architects in Geddington
An Architect's Credentials for a Village Like This
Geddington has three Grade I listed buildings and sits within a designated conservation area. Working here requires an architect whose credentials match the sensitivity of the setting. I am an ARB-registered and RIBA Chartered architect and a member of SPAB — the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings — whose philosophy of careful repair runs through everything our practice does. I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we now work from Oxford with clients across the country. Our project The Deerings, a certified Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, won the RIBA East Award in 2018, the same year I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards. In 2025 I was invited to judge the British Homes Awards. We are members of the Passivhaus Trust and accredited with The Green Register, and our work has been published in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine and The Modern House Journal. That combination — heritage rigour and environmental ambition — is not a contradiction. It is what a village like Geddington demands.
Architectural Services in the Conservation Area
Renovations in Geddington are conservation work by definition. The Church of St Mary Magdalene, Grade I listed, has a Saxon nave dating from around the mid-tenth century, with the building largely complete by about 1300 and a tower and clerestory added in the fourteenth century. It is built from coursed limestone rubble with ashlar dressings, and it was refurbished in the Victorian and Edwardian periods by George Gilbert Scott and Ninian Comper — architects whose interventions were themselves carefully considered responses to what already existed. A royal palace once stood beside the church, and the whole village carries the weight of that history in its fabric. North Northamptonshire Council handles planning for the parish, and within the conservation area every alteration must demonstrate that it preserves or enhances the character of the place. Through my training with SPAB, I approach these buildings with the conviction that the limestone walls, the lime mortar, the stone-slate roofs have their own behaviour — how they manage moisture, how they weather — and the architect's role is to work with that behaviour rather than impose something new upon it.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, addresses the thermal performance of older homes without compromising their heritage value. In Geddington, where much of the housing is solid-walled limestone construction within a conservation area, the challenge is achieving meaningful improvements in comfort and energy efficiency while respecting the breathability of the existing fabric. Internal vapour-open insulation, airtightness detailing at the junctions where walls meet floors and roofs, and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery can transform how these homes feel to live in — warmer, quieter, dramatically cheaper to run — while the stone facades continue to age as they always have. For the later housing in the village, the gains from a full retrofit can be even more straightforward.
Extension Design within Geddington's conservation area requires more than a good floor plan. Any extension must sit comfortably within the established character — the limestone palette, the proportions of the existing buildings, the relationship between built form and the open spaces that give the village its structure. The best extensions respond to what is already there while bringing something considered and well-made of their own time, rather than producing a pastiche of what stands next door. Whether the brief is opening up a ground floor, adding a garden room, or creating space above, the work should feel like a natural continuation of the building's story.
Sustainable Design underpins every project we take on, and in Geddington the evidence for its value stands at the village crossroads — a structure built over seven centuries ago that endures because it was made with skill and maintained with care. That is what sustainable architecture means at its most fundamental: building well enough that the question of replacement does not arise. PassivHaus Design sets our benchmark for new construction, delivering certified comfort with minimal energy demand. New Build Design in Geddington must navigate the conservation area designation with materials and scale that respect the limestone village around it. For sites in the countryside of the former Rockingham Forest, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework offers a route to architecturally outstanding homes — but the design must be worthy of a landscape that already contains one of medieval England's finest surviving monuments.
Geddington is a village where the highest standards of craftsmanship have been expected for seven hundred years. If you are considering a project here, we would welcome the conversation.