Few villages wear their history quite the way Gomeldon does. Walk south-west from the village and you are standing on the site of a medieval settlement — a scheduled monument where ten buildings were excavated in the 1960s, revealing the foundations of longhouses where people and sheep once shared the same roof. The modern village grew up alongside that older footprint, shaped by the Bourne Valley's chalk landscape and the materials it provides. West Gomeldon Farmhouse, a seventeenth-century building of brick and flint with stone mullioned windows and later eighteenth-century extensions in Flemish bond brickwork, shows how this place has always been one of adaptation — each generation reading what came before and adding to it with care. That layering of time and material is something I find deeply compelling as an architect, and it is what makes working in Gomeldon a genuine pleasure.
Award-winning Architects in Gomeldon
Trusted Architects for Homes in Gomeldon
Gresford Architects has been designing homes that respond to their setting for nearly twenty years. I founded the practice in London in 2006 and trained at the Mackintosh School of Architecture in Glasgow, where I developed a deep appreciation for materials, craft and the way buildings sit within a landscape — something that resonates strongly when working in the Bourne Valley. We are RIBA Chartered, ARB Registered, accredited by The Green Register, and members of both the Passivhaus Trust and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Our Passivhaus home The Deerings won the RIBA East Award in 2018, our renovation of The Old Water Tower was shortlisted for the RIBA South Awards, and I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the 2018 Building Design Awards. We work with clients across the country, bringing the same attention to craft and sustainability wherever a project takes us.
How We Work with Homeowners in Gomeldon
Extension Design is often the most immediate need for homes in Gomeldon, and the village's character asks something specific of any addition. The early twentieth century saw farmland here sold as smallholdings by the Homesteads company, creating the ribbon of housing along Gomeldon Road that defines much of the village today. Extending these properties means working within plots that were laid out for a different purpose entirely — understanding the proportions, the relationship to neighbouring houses, and the materials that will allow new work to sit comfortably alongside both the smallholding-era buildings and the older farmsteads in the valley. Wiltshire Council, as the local planning authority, will assess any extension for its impact on the street scene, and we prepare applications that anticipate those considerations from the outset.
Renovations in Gomeldon call for an architect who can read the building's own story. West Gomeldon Farmhouse is a case in point — its earliest phase is a two-bay block of brick and flint with chamfered stone mullioned windows, a construction method rooted in the chalk downland tradition of combining locally quarried flint with brick dressings for structural definition. Later additions in the eighteenth century introduced Flemish bond brickwork and header bond walling, each phase legible in the fabric. Renovating buildings of this kind means understanding how flint and brick manage moisture differently, how lime mortar allows the wall to breathe, and where modern interventions must defer to the logic of the original construction. My membership of SPAB informs this approach — the principle that old buildings are understood first and respected throughout.
Sustainable Design is central to everything we do at Gresford Architects, and in a valley village like Gomeldon it takes on a particular character. The River Bourne, the chalk stream that gives the Bourne Valley its name, is a reminder that this landscape is a living system, and the buildings we design should respond to that. We choose materials for their durability, thermal performance and ability to age well in this setting — not just because it is the right thing to do, but because homes that work with their environment are more comfortable to inhabit, more economical to run and more joyful to live in. For the older properties in the village, EnerPHit offers a certified retrofit pathway that dramatically improves thermal performance while respecting the existing fabric — particularly important where brick-and-flint walls require careful insulation strategies that manage moisture and avoid trapping dampness.
PassivHaus Design takes sustainable principles to the highest certified standard for new homes, delivering exceptional comfort with minimal energy demand. New Build Design gives us the freedom to achieve these performance targets from the ground up, and in Gomeldon — where the Idmiston Parish Neighbourhood Plan, adopted in 2017, guides the scale and character of new development — any new home must be designed to respect the village's setting in the Bourne Valley. For sites in the open countryside beyond the village, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route for a dwelling of truly exceptional quality, justified not by housing allocation but by the standard of its architecture and its response to this chalk downland landscape.
If you are considering a project in Gomeldon — whether extending a home with roots in the smallholding era, renovating a flint-and-brick farmhouse, or building something new that belongs in this valley — we would welcome the conversation.