There is something quietly fascinating about a place that began as a collection of tents. Larkhill grew from a summer training camp on Salisbury Plain in 1899 into one of the British Army's most established garrisons, and yet it sits barely a mile and a half from Stonehenge — a structure built with such extraordinary care that it has endured for nearly five thousand years. That contrast stays with me as an architect: the impermanent camp that became permanent, the landscape that was already ancient before the first tent peg was driven in. When the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company erected its flying school hangars here in 1910, nobody imagined they would still be standing over a century later, let alone carry Grade II* listed status as the oldest surviving aerodrome building in the country. Buildings outlive the intentions of their makers, which is precisely why designing them well matters from the start.
Award-winning Architects in Larkhill
Why Gresford Architects for a Project in Larkhill
Larkhill presents a design challenge unlike most villages in Wiltshire. Its built fabric is largely twentieth-century military — functional, standardised, and in many cases reaching the end of its useful life at the same time as a major programme of new construction transforms the garrison. Designing well here means understanding the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site that shapes the planning landscape, the archaeological sensitivity of the ground itself, and the very particular needs of a community whose population can shift with regimental movements. I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006 and later moved the practice to Oxford, where we work with clients across the country on projects ranging from heritage restorations to high-performance new builds. Our RIBA East Award for The Deerings — a Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire — and our shortlisting for the RIBA South Awards for The Old Water Tower demonstrated that energy performance and architectural ambition belong together. I am ARB-registered and RIBA Chartered, accredited by The Green Register, and a member of both the Passivhaus Trust and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. That breadth of expertise matters in Larkhill, where the same practice might need to advise on a new family home, improve the thermal performance of a post-war property, or work sensitively around a listed military building.
Architectural Services for Homes in Larkhill
New Build Design is central to what Larkhill needs. The Army Basing Programme has brought around one thousand new Service Family Accommodation homes to the garrison, and as the village continues to grow, the opportunity to build homes that are genuinely comfortable, economical to run, and designed to last becomes more important with every plot. Wiltshire Council handles planning for new residential development here, and any proposal within or near the Stonehenge World Heritage Site must demonstrate that it will not harm the setting of the monument — from visual impact to light pollution and the preservation of dark skies. These are constraints that reward careful, considered design rather than standard volume-builder approaches, and they are exactly the kind of conditions we find most rewarding to work within.
Sustainable Design runs through every project we take on, but it has a particular resonance in a place where the landscape is the heritage. Building sustainably on the edge of Salisbury Plain means thinking about how a home sits in the wider setting — its materials, its energy use, its relationship to the open chalk downland that stretches beyond the garrison boundary. We approach sustainability not as a constraint but as the core of good design — homes that use less energy, cost less to run, and last longer. PassivHaus Design takes that principle to its highest standard, delivering year-round comfort with minimal heating demand through meticulous fabric performance, airtightness, and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery. For new homes in Larkhill, where wind exposure across the plain is a genuine design consideration, the PassivHaus approach to thermal envelope design is especially well suited.
Much of Larkhill's existing housing stock dates from the post-war rebuilding of the garrison, and many of these properties were built to standards that fall well short of current expectations for comfort and energy efficiency. EnerPHit provides a rigorous, evidence-based retrofit framework for exactly this kind of building — solid-walled or cavity-walled construction from the mid-twentieth century that loses heat rapidly and costs a great deal to keep warm. A well-designed EnerPHit retrofit combines insulation, improved airtightness, and mechanical ventilation to transform a draughty post-war house into a home that maintains stable temperatures year-round with a fraction of the original heating demand. Extension Design offers another route to improving these properties, adding the space that families in Larkhill need — an extra bedroom, a larger kitchen, a home office — while bringing the extended portion up to modern performance standards that often improve the whole building.
Renovations take on a different character in Larkhill, where the most significant older buildings are military rather than domestic. The Royal Artillery Officers' Mess, designed by William A. Ross between 1936 and 1941 in a monumental neo-Baroque style, is Grade II listed — a red brick building over a steel frame with ashlar dressings and timber sash windows that represents the confidence of inter-war military architecture. Working with buildings of this calibre requires an understanding of their construction logic and material behaviour. Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework applies to the open countryside of Salisbury Plain beyond the garrison boundary, where any new dwelling must demonstrate truly outstanding or innovative design that enhances its immediate setting. The chalk grassland, the long sightlines, and the archaeological weight of this landscape set a high bar, and rightly so.
If you are considering a project in Larkhill — whether that means a new home built to the highest standards, an extension that gives your family the space it needs, or a retrofit that finally makes a post-war property comfortable to live in — we would welcome the conversation.