There is something quietly compelling about a village that sits at the beginning of England's most famous river. Thames Head — the spring that marks the source of the Thames — rises from the Cotswold limestone just north of Kemble, in a field called Trewsbury Mead. In dry seasons the spring retreats underground and the riverbed lies empty; in wetter months the water returns, surfacing through the same oolitic limestone that was quarried to build the village itself. As an architect, I find that connection between ground and building irresistible. The stone that holds the water is the stone that forms the walls, the roof slates, the dry-stone boundaries running along West Lane and Church Road. Kemble is a place where geology and architecture are the same conversation.
Award-winning Architects in Kemble
Trusted Architects Working Across the Country
Gresford Architects is an award-winning practice I founded in London in 2006 and now run from Oxford, working with clients across the country. Our accreditation with The Green Register and membership of the Passivhaus Trust reflect a core belief that sustainability is not a constraint but an opportunity — to create homes that are more comfortable, more economical to run and more joyful to inhabit. We are RIBA chartered and ARB registered, and our membership of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings guides how we approach older structures: understanding their materials and moisture behaviour before proposing change. The Deerings, our Passivhaus project in Hertfordshire, won the RIBA East Award in 2018, and our heritage-sensitive work on The Great Barn in Buckinghamshire — a Grade II listed barn restoration — shows how carefully we read historic fabric. That dual focus, energy performance and heritage care, is precisely what homes in a village like Kemble demand.
How We Work with Homes in Kemble
Sustainable Design is the thread that runs through every project we take on, and in Kemble it has a particular resonance. This is a village whose buildings were made from what the ground offered — Cotswold limestone pulled from local quarries, shaped and laid by generations of masons who understood the material intimately. Our fabric-first approach follows the same principle: working with what the site and the climate give us, reducing energy demand through intelligent orientation, insulation and material selection rather than relying on technology to compensate for poor design. The Cotswolds National Landscape designation that covers Kemble adds weight to every design decision, and Cotswold District Council scrutinises proposals carefully — but that scrutiny aligns with how we work. Sustainability here means designing buildings that belong to this landscape, not just sit on it.
EnerPHit offers a rigorous, proven route for improving the energy performance of older homes in Kemble without losing what makes them worth keeping. The village has two conservation areas — one around the historic core near the Church of All Saints and Kemble House, the other around the railway station — and many properties within them have solid stone walls, single-glazed windows and limited insulation. These are buildings that can feel beautiful in summer and punishing in winter. EnerPHit addresses that gap through careful internal or external insulation, high-performance glazing and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, all modelled to ensure the moisture dynamics of Cotswold limestone walls are respected. The Church of All Saints, with its thirteenth-century tower and the rest largely rebuilt by Medland and Son in 1876-7, demonstrates how Kemble's buildings have always been adapted — the question is whether adaptation is done with understanding or just with good intentions.
Extension Design for homes in Kemble means reading two quite different characters. The older village around Church Road and West Lane has traditional Cotswold stone cottages and farmhouses where an extension needs to respond to solid stone construction, lime mortars and the rhythm of existing openings. Around the station — the Grade II listed 1882 Tudor-style building that replaced Brunel's original broad-gauge exchange halt — the architecture shifts to later Victorian and twentieth-century properties where the design conversation is different: brick, render, more regular proportions. In both settings, an extension that simply copies what is already there misses an opportunity. We design additions that respect the host building while making clear they belong to the era in which we live — honest about their materials, generous with natural light, and planned so the thermal envelope works as a whole rather than leaving a cold junction where old meets new.
Renovations for older properties in Kemble draw on our membership of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and a genuine respect for how these structures were made. Kemble House, originally built in the seventeenth century and remodelled in the mid-nineteenth century by R.W. Billings for the Gordon family, is a reminder that good renovation has always been part of this village's story. PassivHaus Design applies the same attention to performance for new homes — airtightness, thermal-bridge-free construction, comfort without compromise. New Build Design within the Cotswolds National Landscape requires a design that earns its place, and Paragraph 84 provides a route for architecturally outstanding homes in the open countryside around Kemble, where the Thames begins its long journey east through meadow and limestone.
Whether you are extending a cottage near the church, improving the warmth of a stone-walled home, or considering something new in the landscape around Kemble, we would welcome the conversation. Good architecture here starts with the same material the river does — the stone beneath your feet.