What strikes me about Latton is how clearly you can read the geology in the buildings. The Church of St John the Baptist — Grade I listed, built by Cirencester Abbey in the middle of the twelfth century — is constructed from local rubble limestone under a roof of Cotswold stone tiles, and it sits in the landscape as naturally as if it had grown from the ground beneath it. That same limestone appears in the ashlar quoins of Seven Bridges Farmhouse, an eighteenth-century house on Castle Eaton Road, and in the rubble walls of the older cottages scattered through the village. Then there is the other story the geology tells: the gravel terraces of the upper Thames valley that brought first the canal builders — the Thames and Severn Canal opened through the parish in 1789, meeting the North Wilts Canal at Latton Basin — and later the extractors whose work created the lakes of the Cotswold Water Park. It is a village shaped by what lies beneath it, and that relationship between ground and building is something I find endlessly interesting to work with.
Award-winning Architects in Latton
Why Clients Across the Country Trust Gresford
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and the practice is now based in Oxford, working with clients across the country. I am a RIBA Chartered and ARB Registered architect, a member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and accredited with The Green Register. Our work spans heritage-sensitive renovations of listed buildings through to certified Passivhaus new builds, and the common thread is a commitment to buildings that are comfortable, designed to last and to use energy and materials as efficiently as possible. Our project The Deerings, a Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, won a RIBA East Award in 2018, the same year I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards. We have been published in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine and The Modern House Journal, and in 2025 I served as a judge for the British Homes Awards. Whether the project is a rubble limestone farmhouse in the upper Thames valley or a contemporary new build on a sensitive rural site, the approach is the same: understand the place, work with its materials and character, and design something that belongs there.
Designing for a Village Shaped by Stone and Water
Sustainable Design is the foundation of everything we do, and in a parish like Latton — where the Cotswold Water Park lakes sit alongside centuries-old limestone buildings — it feels particularly appropriate. The Water Park landscape is a reminder that how we use the land has lasting consequences, and that principle applies to buildings too. We design homes that are more comfortable to inhabit, more economical to run and more joyful to live in, using natural materials, high-performance building envelopes and passive strategies that reduce energy demand from the outset. In Latton, where the local building tradition already demonstrates what it means to build from what the ground provides, sustainability is not an abstract principle — it is the logic the place was built on.
Renovations of the older buildings in Latton demand an architect who understands traditional construction. The rubble limestone walls of the village's listed buildings — from the twelfth-century church with its Norman tower arch and chancel arch to the solid stone of Seven Bridges Farmhouse — behave very differently from modern cavity walls. They manage moisture through breathability, and any intervention that disrupts that cycle risks long-term damage. My training with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings informs this directly: lime mortars, breathable insulation, repair techniques that respect the way stone was laid and pointed. Wiltshire Council handles planning applications for the parish, and for listed buildings in Latton, listed building consent requires a clear understanding of the building's significance and how any proposed changes affect it. We prepare applications that demonstrate that understanding from the first conversation.
The open countryside around Latton, particularly within the Cotswold Water Park landscape, makes Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework a genuinely relevant route for homeowners considering a new dwelling in a rural setting. Paragraph 84 does not require allocated housing land — it requires architecture of truly exceptional quality, a building whose design is so thoroughly responsive to its landscape that it could justify its own existence outside a settlement boundary. For a site in the low-lying Thames valley landscape near Latton, that means engaging with the water table, the gravel geology, the long views across the lakes and meadows, and the material traditions of the surrounding villages. It is a demanding brief, but one that produces extraordinary homes.
Extension Design offers a way to adapt the homes in Latton to modern life without losing what makes them worth keeping. Whether the starting point is a stone cottage or a more recent property, we design extensions that sit comfortably alongside existing structures — matching materials where appropriate, or introducing a considered contemporary contrast that allows the original building to be read clearly. For the older limestone properties, this means understanding the coursing, the mortar, the proportions of openings. For newer homes, it means thinking about how an extension can improve not just the floor area but the quality of light, the relationship with the garden, the thermal performance of the whole building. EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, provides a route to dramatically improved energy performance for existing homes in Latton — particularly the solid-walled properties where conventional insulation approaches can cause moisture problems. And for anyone planning a home from the ground up, whether on an infill plot within the village or a larger rural site, New Build Design to certified PassivHaus standards delivers exceptional comfort, minimal heating demand and a building designed to perform for decades.
If you are considering a project in Latton — whether working with the village's limestone heritage, extending a family home or exploring something new in the Cotswold Water Park landscape — we would welcome the conversation.