Not many villages can claim a building history that stretches back to the thirteenth century and a science campus that designs satellites for launch in the same parish. Harwell has both, and for an architect that juxtaposition is genuinely thrilling. The village itself is recorded in Saxon charters from 956 — over a thousand years of continuous settlement — and its conservation area still holds timber-framed houses from the 1200s, fourteenth-century barns at Middle Farm, and the clunch walls of St Matthew's Church, which has stood since at least the thirteenth century. Then, barely two miles away, the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus houses particle accelerators and quantum computing laboratories on the site of the former Atomic Energy Research Establishment. It is a place where the deep past and the urgent future sit side by side, and that kind of layering is what makes architecture here so interesting.
Award-winning Architects in Harwell
Why Homeowners in Harwell Trust Gresford Architects
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006 and later moved the practice to Oxford, where we now work from the Eco Centre in Osney Mead. Harwell's mix of medieval timber-frame, clunch, cob and later brick is exactly the kind of material complexity we have spent nearly two decades learning to navigate — buildings that demand an architect who understands how they were constructed before proposing how they should change. I am RIBA Chartered and ARB Registered, a member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the Passivhaus Trust and The Green Register, and that combination of heritage knowledge and energy performance expertise is what a village like Harwell asks of its architect.
That range shows in our work. The Deerings, a certified Passivhaus in Hertfordshire, won a RIBA East Award in 2018 — proof that rigorous energy performance and genuine architectural quality are not competing ambitions. The Old Water Tower, shortlisted for a RIBA South Award, showed how a heritage building can be reimagined with care. I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the 2018 Building Design Awards and served as a judge at the British Homes Awards in 2025. Dezeen, The Modern House Journal and The Spaces have featured our projects, from the pink concrete Ritson Road extension in Hackney to The Old Orchard, our EnerPHit retrofit in Oxfordshire.
Architectural Services for a Village with Centuries of Character
Harwell falls under Vale of White Horse District Council for planning, and the village conservation area — which broadly reflects the historic core of the settlement — adds a layer of planning scrutiny to any project within or adjacent to its boundary. The buildings here span a remarkable range of materials: clunch and rubble stone in the oldest structures, timber framing in the medieval houses along High Street and Wellshead Lane, cob walls on several listed outbuildings, and brick in the later Georgian and Victorian additions. Any work in Harwell needs to understand that material palette as a whole, not just the individual property.
Renovations are where much of the most rewarding work in Harwell begins. Lime Tree Cottage on High Street dates to around 1250, remodelled around 1300 and given a new front around 1700 — four centuries of adaptation written into a single building. The fourteenth-century barns at Middle Farm, the timber-framed hall house at Bayllols Manor, the Geering Almshouses built around 1723 — these are structures that have survived the Great Fire of Harwell in 1852 and centuries of changing use. My SPAB membership reflects how we approach this work: understanding how a building breathes and moves before introducing any change, reading lime mortar, cob and timber frame as systems that manage moisture through permeability rather than barriers.
For the solid-walled properties in Harwell's conservation area, EnerPHit offers a rigorous retrofit pathway. Clunch walls and cob structures cannot take conventional cavity insulation, so EnerPHit coordinates insulation strategy, airtightness detailing, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery and high-performance glazing into a whole-building approach. The result is a home that is warm, quiet and economical to run — comfortable, designed to last and to use energy and materials as efficiently as possible — without compromising the breathability that has kept these walls standing for seven hundred years.
Extension Design is a natural fit for many homes in Harwell. The cottages and farmsteads along the High Street were built for a different pattern of living, and families today need more space, more light, more connection to the garden. In a conservation area with such a varied material palette — clunch beside timber frame beside brick — the design challenge is reading which material language the extension should speak, and how new work can sit comfortably alongside centuries of adaptation.
Sustainable Design runs through everything we do, and in a village adjacent to one of Europe's leading science campuses there is something fitting about designing homes that are as forward-thinking as the research happening nearby. New Build Design allows us to design from first principles — orientation, daylighting, thermal envelope, spatial flow — and PassivHaus Design takes that further, achieving certified comfort with minimal energy demand through a fabric-first approach. For those with land in the countryside surrounding the village, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route for truly outstanding or innovative homes where the design genuinely enhances its rural setting.
If you are considering a renovation, extension or new build in Harwell, we would welcome the conversation. This is a village that has been building and rebuilding for over a thousand years — adapting, repairing, adding — and that instinct for thoughtful change is one we share.