The Church of St Mary the Virgin in Little Harrowden once had a spire, a tower and four bells. The spire fell in a storm in 1703 and was never rebuilt. The Norman tower stood on for over two and a half centuries more, but by the 1960s it had become structurally unsafe, and in September 1967 it was demolished. In its place, a single-storey vestry was built with a glazed tower arch and a bellcote at the apex, housing the smallest of the original four bells. What interests me as an architect is the honesty of that response. The village did not attempt a replica; it accepted the loss and built something appropriate to its own time while preserving the arch and the memory of what had stood there. That is an architectural decision worth respecting. The rest of the church — Grade II* listed, mainly Norman with a clerestoried nave of four bays — survives, its fabric recording continuous worship on a hill whose name, Harrowden, derives from the Old English for heathen temple. Christianity arrived; the hill kept its name.
Award-winning Architects in Little Harrowden
Published Work Across Heritage and Performance
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 understanding what exists is the foundation of any good intervention. 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 Little Harrowden, where the church records both Norman craftsmanship and a twentieth-century decision about what to do when part of a building cannot be saved, that range of experience is what the work demands.
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EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, addresses the thermal performance of older homes without compromising their character. The stone cottages in Little Harrowden 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 efficiency. 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 remain unchanged.
Extension Design in Little Harrowden should respond to the stone character and modest proportions of the village. The houses cluster around the church on the hill, and the relationship between the buildings, the lanes and the rising ground is part of what gives the village its character. An extension should work with that setting — its materials, its scale, its orientation — rather than ignoring it. 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.
Renovations in Little Harrowden engage with a village built on a hill that has been a place of gathering since before Christianity. The church, dating mainly from the Norman period and substantially reshaped in the early fourteenth century, has itself been through a programme of major repair since 1997 — external stonework, clerestory windows reopened, lead roofing replaced. These are the kinds of interventions that domestic properties in the village also require: careful, phased, responsive to what the building tells you. North 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, and any renovation must work with it.
Sustainable Design connects every project we take on, and in Little Harrowden the church's own story offers a lesson. When the tower could not be saved, the village built something honest in its place — and the result has served the building and the community for over half a century. Sustainable design is not about preserving everything at any cost; it is about making decisions that serve the building's future as well as its past. PassivHaus Design sets our benchmark for new construction, delivering certified comfort with minimal energy demand. New Build Design in Little Harrowden should respect the stone character of the hilltop village. 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 worthy of a hill that has drawn people to build upon it for well over a thousand years.
Little Harrowden lost its tower and built something honest in its place. If you are considering a project here, we would welcome the conversation.