Few villages in the Vale of White Horse are navigating the tension between heritage and growth quite as directly as Kingston Bagpuize. The conservation area around the church and manor house holds a quietly beautiful collection of buildings — limestone rubble cottages with thatch roofs, the elegant red brick and stone of Kingston Bagpuize House dating from the 1660s, the Church of St John the Baptist built in 1799–1800 and remodelled in 1882. And yet just to the east, planning permission has been granted for 660 new homes that will substantially reshape the edges of the village. As an architect, I find this kind of moment fascinating, because the decisions made now about design, materials and energy performance will define how Kingston Bagpuize feels for generations to come.
Award-winning Architects in Kingston Bagpuize
An Architect's Practice Built on Craft and Performance
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006 and later moved the practice to Oxford, where we are now based at the Eco Centre in Osney Mead. Our work sits at the intersection of heritage sensitivity and high-performance design — the marriage of the poetic and the practical, as I often describe it. The Deerings, our certified Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, won a RIBA East Award in 2018, and The Old Water Tower was shortlisted for the RIBA South Awards in 2016. I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the 2018 Building Design Awards and a judge for the British Homes Awards in 2025.
As a RIBA Chartered and ARB Registered architect, a member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the Passivhaus Trust, and The Green Register, I bring a breadth of understanding that is particularly relevant in a village like Kingston Bagpuize, where listed buildings, a conservation area, and large-scale new development all sit within the same parish. Understanding how to work sensitively with the old while pushing for the highest standards in the new is not a compromise — it is where the most rewarding architecture happens.
Architectural Services for a Village in Transition
Kingston Bagpuize falls within the planning authority of Vale of White Horse District Council. The village has a conservation area designated in 1970 that protects the historic core around the church and Kingston Bagpuize House, and the parish is currently consulting on a draft Neighbourhood Plan that will guide how new development relates to the existing village. That planning context shapes every project here, whether it involves a listed cottage in the conservation area or a new home on the expanding eastern edge.
New Build Design is at the heart of what Kingston Bagpuize faces right now. With 660 homes approved on land to the east of the village — including a local centre, primary school and care units — the village is at a genuine crossroads. The question of what constitutes good new architecture in this setting, visible from the conservation area and reshaping the edges of the village, is urgent and real. New homes should be comfortable, designed to last, and built to use energy and materials as efficiently as possible. That means thinking about orientation, thermal performance, natural light and how each home connects to the landscape and the community around it, rather than simply meeting minimum standards.
Sustainable Design runs through every project we take on, but it has particular resonance in Kingston Bagpuize, where the approved development of 660 homes will be visible from the conservation area and from the farmland that surrounds the village. New homes here will be understood in relation to the much older buildings nearby — which makes environmental performance not just an ethical choice but a statement about how the village cares for its future. We see sustainability not as a constraint but as an opportunity to create homes that are genuinely better to live in — warmer in winter, cooler in summer, quieter, and far less expensive to run.
PassivHaus Design takes this further still. The Passivhaus standard delivers exceptional airtightness, thermal comfort and indoor air quality through meticulous design and construction detailing. For anyone building as part of the approved development on the eastern edge of the village, or designing a self-build in the open landscape beyond, PassivHaus offers a level of comfort and energy performance that conventional construction simply cannot match. The thermal stability it provides is particularly valuable in a village where new homes will stand alongside centuries-old stone buildings — the contrast makes the performance gains unmissably clear.
Extension Design is equally relevant for homeowners in Kingston Bagpuize who want to stay in the village rather than move. The limestone cottages and later Victorian houses along the main road and around the church — many built to modest proportions — often need rethinking as families grow. In this setting, an extension is not just about adding space; it is about continuing the conversation the village has been having with its own materials for centuries. A well-designed extension should respond to the proportions, texture and colour of the original building while bringing genuine improvement to how the house works daily — more light, better flow, a stronger connection to the garden.
Renovations require careful judgement in a village with this range of building ages and materials. The limestone rubble and thatch of the oldest cottages — built when Kingston Bagpuize was still a small agricultural settlement — demand a different approach from the red brick and stone villas that came later. My membership of SPAB teaches you to read a building before you propose anything for it, to understand its materials and its logic. In a place where the stone might have come from local digging, and the construction methods reflect centuries of local practice, that discipline matters.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, provides a rigorous pathway for improving the thermal performance of older homes. For solid-walled properties in Kingston Bagpuize — the limestone cottages and Victorian stone houses around the church and main road — where conventional cavity wall insulation is not an option, EnerPHit coordinates insulation, airtightness, ventilation and window upgrades into a single, effective system. These solid walls have real thermal mass and character; EnerPHit allows you to improve dramatically without resorting to external insulation that would compromise the village's material identity.
The open farmland around the village, stretching across the vale towards the low hills to the south, also presents opportunities under Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework. This policy permits truly outstanding or innovative homes in the open countryside where the architecture demonstrably enhances its setting — a rare chance to create something exceptional in a landscape that has shaped the village since it was first recorded as Cingestune in the tenth century.
Whether you are planning a new home as part of the village's next chapter, extending or renovating an older property in the conservation area, or exploring the possibility of a Paragraph 84 home in the surrounding landscape, I would welcome the chance to talk. Kingston Bagpuize is a place where the relationship between old and new matters deeply, and that is exactly the kind of architecture we care about most.