Between 1835 and 1838, Robert Stephenson drove a railway tunnel over two kilometres through the ridge beneath Kilsby — and what interests me as an architect is not just the scale of the engineering but the care given to its visible elements. The two ventilation shafts that rise from the fields above the tunnel are topped with circular crenellated turrets, as if Stephenson understood that a structure need not sacrifice beauty for function. Both shafts are now listed buildings. The tunnel entrances, Grade II* listed, demonstrate the same principle. This was engineering that took architecture seriously, and the result has been valued and maintained for nearly two centuries. Kilsby itself is older still — sited on the crossing of two medieval drove routes, with the Roman line of Watling Street forming its eastern parish boundary. The conservation area, designated in 2018, protects a village whose history runs from the Anglo-Saxon period through a contested claim to the first shots of the Civil War in 1642, and it is built with a confidence that matches the tunnel beneath it.
Award-winning Architects in Kilsby
Published Work, Practical Range
Our projects have been published in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine and The Modern House Journal — work that ranges from a Grade II listed barn restoration in Buckinghamshire to a certified Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, and shares the conviction that comfort, durability and environmental responsibility are aspects of the same ambition. I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we now work from Oxford with clients across the country. I am an ARB-registered and RIBA Chartered architect, a member of SPAB, the Passivhaus Trust and The Green Register. The Deerings won the RIBA East Award in 2018, the year I was also a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards. In 2025 I was invited to judge the British Homes Awards. In a village like Kilsby, where the conservation area covers a building stock spanning several centuries and the parish contains some of the most significant railway heritage in the country, that breadth of experience is what the work demands.
Architectural Services in a Drove-road Village
Renovations in Kilsby engage with a village whose built fabric reflects its position at a historic crossroads. The church, now dedicated to St Faith — though it has carried at least two earlier dedications — began as a daughter chapel of the neighbouring parish of Barby and retains medieval fabric beneath later alterations. The older stone properties in the village core, many of them listed, use the local stone palette with proportions and detailing that speak of a settlement that was always more than a farming hamlet. The village's Puritan history — it was a centre of leading-edge nonconformism in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries — produced one of the earliest Independent chapels in the county, adding a further layer to the built heritage. West Northamptonshire Council handles planning for the parish. Through my membership of SPAB, I approach these buildings with the understanding that solid stone walls have their own behaviour — how they manage moisture, how they weather — and any renovation must work with that behaviour rather than against it.
Extension Design within Kilsby's conservation area requires sensitivity to the character that earned the village its designation in 2018. The stone palette, the proportions, the way the older buildings address the drove-road lanes — all contribute to a village that reads as a coherent whole. An extension should respond to what is already there, matching materials and scale while bringing something considered and well-made of its own time. Whether the brief is a ground-floor extension that opens the house to the garden, a garden room, or additional space above, the design should make the whole building feel more resolved rather than simply larger.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, addresses the thermal performance of older homes without compromising their character. The stone cottages in Kilsby present the familiar challenge of solid-walled construction: thick walls with no insulation, draughty junctions, and a building envelope that predates any notion of thermal performance. Vapour-open insulation, careful airtightness detailing, and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery can transform these homes — warmer, quieter, dramatically cheaper to run — while the stone facades continue to weather as they always have.
Sustainable Design connects every project we take on, and in Kilsby it resonates with the tunnel's own story — a piece of infrastructure built with such care that it has served continuously since 1838, carrying trains that Stephenson could never have imagined at speeds he never envisaged. That is sustainable engineering at its finest: building well enough that the structure outlasts the technology it was designed for. PassivHaus Design sets our benchmark for new construction, delivering certified comfort with minimal energy demand. New Build Design within the conservation area must respect the established character of the village. For sites in the countryside around the parish, where the Watling Street corridor and the open farmland create a landscape of real breadth, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route to architecturally outstanding homes — but the design must be worthy of a parish that already contains some of the finest railway engineering in Britain.
Kilsby knows what happens when engineering takes architecture seriously — the result lasts for centuries. If you are considering a project here, we would welcome the conversation.