Kislingbury has always lived with its river. The Nene flows through the parish to the north, crossing beneath an old, narrow bridge that has served the village for centuries — narrow for both vehicles and for the water, which regularly floods the surrounding land. What interests me as an architect is how the village has adapted to this relationship rather than tried to escape it. The houses stand above the flood line; the open ground around the river absorbs the water; the bridge endures because it was built to. The Church of St Luke, Grade I listed and dating from the fourteenth century, sits safely on higher ground with its battlemented tower, recessed spire with two tiers of lucarnes and corner pinnacles — a building of real architectural quality for a village of this size. Recorded as Ceselingeberie in the Domesday survey of 1086, Kislingbury has understood its landscape long enough to build accordingly.
Award-winning Architects in Kislingbury
From Heritage Repair to Certified Passivhaus
Our work ranges from a Grade II listed barn restoration in Buckinghamshire to a certified Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire — The Deerings, which won the RIBA East Award in 2018. What connects these projects is the same attention to site, materials and performance that any good building requires. 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. I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards, and in 2025 I was invited to judge the British Homes Awards. Our projects have been published in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine and The Modern House Journal. In a Nene valley village like Kislingbury, where the architecture must respond to both its heritage and the behaviour of the river, that breadth of experience is what the work demands.
Architectural Services on the River Nene
Renovations in Kislingbury engage with a building stock shaped by centuries of living alongside water. The older stone properties in the village use the local materials — limestone and ironstone — with the solid-wall construction typical of the Nene valley. The church, with its fourteenth-century fabric restored around 1700 and again in the 1820s, anchors the village architecturally and demonstrates how successive generations can add to a building without losing what makes it significant. The common fields were enclosed by Act of Parliament in 1779, and the landscape around the village still reflects that transformation. West Northamptonshire Council handles planning for the parish. Through my membership of SPAB, I approach these buildings with the understanding that solid stone walls manage moisture through their mass and their lime mortar — and that any renovation must work with that behaviour rather than seal it off.
Extension Design in a river village like Kislingbury carries considerations that an inland settlement does not. Ground conditions near the Nene, the flood history of individual plots, and the orientation of existing buildings relative to the water all influence what an extension can and should do. The best extensions respond to these conditions as part of the design rather than treating them as constraints to be overcome. Whether the brief is a ground-floor extension that opens up the house to a garden, a garden room with views across the river landscape, or additional space above, the design should make the whole building feel more resolved while sitting comfortably within the village fabric.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, is well suited to the solid-walled stone properties in Kislingbury. These buildings — thick walls with no insulation, draughty junctions, and a building envelope designed for ventilation rather than thermal retention — are exactly what EnerPHit was developed to address. Vapour-open insulation, careful airtightness detailing, and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery can transform them — warmer, quieter, dramatically cheaper to run — while the stone facades continue to breathe as they always have.
Sustainable Design connects every project we take on, and in Kislingbury it connects to a village that has sustained itself beside a river that floods, on ground that has been occupied since at least the Iron Age. Building in response to your environment rather than in spite of it — that is what sustainable architecture means. PassivHaus Design sets our benchmark for new construction, delivering certified comfort with minimal energy demand. New Build Design in Kislingbury should sit within the established character of the village while responding intelligently to the river landscape. For sites in the countryside around the parish, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route to architecturally outstanding homes — but the design must be sensitive to a Nene valley landscape that has shaped settlement here for a very long time.
Kislingbury has lived with its river for a thousand years. If you are considering a project here, we would welcome the conversation.