Not many towns can claim that their most influential citizen was an architect. In Kettering, that architect was John Alfred Gotch — born here in 1852, practising here for more than half a century, and eventually becoming the first provincial president of RIBA in 1923. His hand is everywhere: the Alfred East Art Gallery in its restrained classical style, the Grammar School that became the Municipal Offices, the former Midland Bank on the High Street where a blue plaque now marks his contribution. What draws me to Kettering is this layering — a medieval market town whose streets were shaped by one architect's civic ambition, then filled with the domestic-scale factories of the boot and shoe trade, their regular window patterns and warm orange-red brick sitting comfortably alongside Gotch's grander compositions. Buildings here were made to be part of the street, not set apart from it, and that integration of craft, industry, and civic pride gives Kettering an architectural character quite unlike its neighbours.
Award-winning Architects in Kettering
An Award-Winning Practice Built on Craft and Sustainability
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006 with the conviction that sustainability and architectural quality are not competing priorities but the same one. We are now an Oxford-based practice working with clients across the country, and that founding conviction has only deepened over almost two decades. Our work on The Deerings, a Passivhaus-certified home in Hertfordshire, won the RIBA East Award in 2018 — the same year I was named a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards. We are RIBA chartered and ARB registered, members of the Passivhaus Trust and The Green Register, and our projects have been featured in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine, and The Modern House. My membership of SPAB, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, reflects a parallel commitment to understanding what existing buildings need before deciding what to change — an approach that matters greatly in a town where Gotch's legacy and the shoe factories of the late nineteenth century are woven into the same conservation area. As a judge at the 2025 British Homes Awards, I see what the best new residential architecture looks like nationally; as a practitioner, I bring that perspective to every project, whether in Kettering or anywhere else we work.
How We Work With Homes in Kettering
Extension Design is where many projects in Kettering begin. The town's housing stock spans centuries — from the tight-knit streets of the conservation area, where buildings sit hard to the pavement in orange-red brick with Ketton stone dressings, through to the twentieth-century suburbs that expanded the town east and south. Many of these homes are well-built but no longer match the way families live, and a thoughtful extension can transform not just the available space but the relationship between a house and its garden, its light, its daily use. The former shoe factories that sit within the streetscape — never more than four storeys, their round-headed windows giving them a domestic scale unusual for industrial buildings — present their own opportunities. Where these have been converted to residential use, extending or adapting them requires an architect who reads the rhythm of the existing facade rather than fighting it.
Renovations in Kettering's conservation area call for particular sensitivity. The Grade I listed Church of SS Peter and Paul, with its chancel in the Early Decorated style of about 1300 and its main fabric rebuilt in the mid-fifteenth century, anchors a historic core where Gotch's civic buildings, the shoe factories, and earlier domestic architecture coexist in a surprisingly coherent townscape. Working within this setting — whether restoring a listed property or carefully updating a building that contributes to the conservation area's character — demands an understanding of how old buildings breathe, move, and age. My wife Phoebe is a conservation architect, and her influence runs through our approach to historic fabric. Our restoration of the Grade II listed Great Barn in Buckinghamshire is one example of how we balance the integrity of an original structure with the performance and comfort that modern life requires. North Northamptonshire Council manages planning for Kettering, and navigating their conservation policies is something we approach as collaboration rather than obstacle.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, offers a rigorous route to transforming the thermal performance of older homes without compromising their character. In a town with so much pre-war housing stock — the Victorian and Edwardian terraces that the shoe industry built for its workers, the interwar suburbs that followed — there are thousands of homes in Kettering where draughts, cold walls, and high energy bills are simply accepted as the cost of living in an older property. They do not need to be. EnerPHit addresses heat loss through walls, floors, and roofs while managing moisture carefully, and the result is a home that feels entirely different to live in: warm, quiet, stable in temperature, and far cheaper to run. Sustainable Design underpins this work and everything else we do — material choices, energy strategy, and the ambition to create buildings that are comfortable, designed to last, and as efficient as possible.
New Build Design in Kettering benefits from the town's designation as a Growth Town within the North Northamptonshire Joint Core Strategy. New homes here have an opportunity to draw on the material traditions that give the town its warmth — the local brick, the Ketton stone detailing — rather than defaulting to the placeless developer vernacular that dilutes so many expanding towns. PassivHaus Design takes new build ambition to its highest certified standard, delivering homes that maintain stable temperatures year-round with minimal energy input. For sites beyond the town in the surrounding Northamptonshire countryside, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a demanding but rewarding route for exceptional new homes — architecture that justifies its presence through genuine quality and sensitivity to its landscape.
Kettering is a town that has always understood the value of good architecture — Gotch saw to that. Whether you are extending a home in the conservation area, retrofitting a Victorian terrace, or building something entirely new, we would welcome the chance to talk about what is possible.