There is something about a town that was built on making things. Newbury grew wealthy through cloth — the wool trade filled its streets with buildings that announced prosperity in flint, brick and carved timber. Jack of Newbury, the Tudor clothier whose output made the town nationally significant, may be long gone, but his legacy is written into the fabric of the place: the medieval street pattern that still threads between Northbrook Street and Bartholomew Street, the narrow passageways connecting them, the generous proportions of buildings designed to impress as well as to function. As an architect, what draws me to towns like Newbury is that sense of a place shaped by purpose — where the buildings were never just shelter, but a record of ambition, craft and civic pride. That is a tradition worth continuing.
Award-winning Architects in Newbury
Craft, Prosperity and Sustainable Futures
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006 with a straightforward conviction: that the most sustainable buildings are also the most comfortable, the most economical to run and the most rewarding to inhabit. That idea has shaped everything since. In Newbury, where a town built on craft meets the North Wessex Downs, that principle — marrying the poetic and the practical — feels especially urgent. Our Passivhaus home The Deerings won a RIBA East Award in 2018. The Old Water Tower was shortlisted for the RIBA South Awards. We were finalists for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards, and I was invited to judge the British Homes Awards in 2025. As RIBA chartered and ARB registered architects, with memberships of SPAB, the Passivhaus Trust and The Green Register, we bring a depth of heritage knowledge and environmental expertise that a town with Newbury's architectural richness — cloth-trade grandeur, flint vernacular, and the Downs pressing in from every horizon — genuinely demands.
Architecture Shaped by Trade, Landscape and Time
Sustainable Design runs through every project we undertake, and in Newbury it takes on a particular resonance. The North Wessex Downs National Landscape curves around the town to the south and west — rolling chalk downland, rare chalk streams and ancient woodland that make the relationship between the built and the natural environment inseparable. Designing sustainably here means thinking carefully about materials, energy performance and how a building sits within its setting, whether that is on a street in the town centre where the clothiers once traded or on a plot where the Downs begin to rise beyond the Kennet valley. It means homes that are comfortable, designed to last and to use energy and materials as efficiently as possible.
The town centre conservation area, with its mix of medieval, Georgian and Victorian buildings lining Bartholomew Street and the streets around Newbury Bridge, presents the kind of design challenges we find most rewarding. Renovations in Newbury often mean working with buildings that carry several centuries of alteration — flint walls behind rendered facades, timber frames within later brick skins. My membership of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings reflects a belief that understanding historic fabric is not a constraint but a starting point. Every material, every joint, every repair tells you something about what the building needs next. That is the legacy of Jack of Newbury and the cloth merchants who built this place — craft that reads the material and respects its story. For listed buildings, where listed building consent is required through West Berkshire Council, that sensitivity is not optional — it is the foundation of good design.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus retrofit standard, offers a disciplined route to transforming the thermal performance of older homes in Newbury without erasing what makes them worth keeping. The Georgian townhouses along Bartholomew Street, the Victorian terraces that spread outward from the town centre, the inter-war semis on the roads beyond — these were built long before energy efficiency was a consideration, and many are expensive to heat, draughty in winter and uncomfortable in ways their occupants have simply learned to accept. EnerPHit addresses this with precision: upgraded insulation, airtightness and mechanical ventilation that change how a home feels to live in, while reading the flint, brick and timber that give it its identity rather than concealing them.
Extension Design is often the most practical route for homes in Newbury's established streets — the Victorian and Edwardian terraces near the town centre, the post-war development beyond. Within the conservation area, any extension must demonstrate that it preserves or enhances the character of the street, and we welcome that constraint. It produces better architecture than a blank brief ever could, because it demands that you understand what makes the place worth staying in.
Beyond the town, the North Wessex Downs National Landscape creates both opportunity and responsibility. Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides the route to building a genuinely exceptional home in the open countryside, but the design must be outstanding — sensitive to the chalk downland, dry valleys and ancient hedgerows that frame it. The bar is rightly high. We have the design ambition, the environmental credentials and the Passivhaus expertise to meet it. New Build Design in this context means homes where the landscape is not backdrop but design partner — the fall of the land, the local flint and chalk, the way light moves across the Downs all inform what gets built and how. PassivHaus Design takes that further, delivering homes with exceptional thermal comfort and air quality that perform as thoughtfully as they sit in the landscape.
Newbury is a town that has always understood the connection between what you make and where you live. The cloth trade built its streets, the canal and railway connected it to a wider world, and today the North Wessex Downs frame it with a landscape that demands respect. If you are considering a renovation, an extension, or a new home in or around Newbury, we would welcome the conversation.