There is a particular thrill in discovering that a building is older than it appears. In Newent, this happens often — timber-framed medieval structures concealed behind Georgian and Victorian frontages, their original bones hidden by centuries of quiet adaptation. The Gloucestershire Dendrochronology Project has spent years revealing these hidden frames through tree-ring dating, and what they have found is remarkable: Booth Hall on Broad Street, outwardly unremarkable, contains medieval timber work that predates its visible facade by centuries. Over a hundred listed buildings crowd into this small market town, and many more may be older than anyone assumed. For an architect, this is what makes Newent fascinating — not just the buildings you can see, but the ones concealed within them, waiting to be read.
Award-winning Architects in Newent
Working with Buildings That Have Stories to Tell
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we are now based in Oxford, working with clients across the country. A town like Newent — where medieval timber framing sits behind later frontages, where the conservation area protects a dense concentration of listed structures, and where Forest of Dean District Council takes the historic environment seriously — calls for an architect who understands building history from the inside out. I am a chartered RIBA architect and ARB registered, a member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and The Green Register, and accredited by the Passivhaus Trust. Our restoration of The Great Barn in Buckinghamshire — a Grade II listed barn — demanded the same careful reading of existing fabric that working with the concealed timber frames of Newent requires. The Deerings, our Passivhaus new build in Hertfordshire, won the RIBA East Award in 2018, and that year I was also a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards. In 2025, I served as a judge for the British Homes Awards. Our work has been featured in Dezeen, The Modern House Journal and Grand Designs Magazine. But what matters most in a town like Newent is not the accolades — it is knowing how to work with buildings that carry centuries of alteration in their structure, and doing so with care, patience, and genuine respect for what came before.
Architectural Services for Homes in Newent
Renovations in Newent mean working with buildings that have often been modified many times over. A half-timbered house in the town centre may have its original medieval frame — close-studded oak with pegged joints — concealed behind render or brick cladding from a later century. The Market House, raised on its timber posts in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century with its close studding and diamond-pattern bracing, is one of the most visible examples of the craft tradition here, but many others are less obvious. The Church of St Mary, Grade I listed with origins in the thirteenth century, contains its own structural story — the carpenter Edward Taylor rebuilt the roof without its original centre pillars, creating what is said to be the largest unsupported wooden ceiling in the country. Good renovation in this context begins with understanding what the building actually is, reading its layers, identifying what each phase contributed, and making decisions that respect the whole while bringing the structure confidently into modern use. Forest of Dean District Council, as the local planning authority, expects work within the conservation area to be informed and sensitive, and our approach — grounded in my SPAB membership and a deep understanding of traditional construction — works naturally within that framework.
EnerPHit is particularly well suited to the older buildings that give Newent its character. The timber-framed cottages clustered in the conservation area often retain their original single-leaf walls — beautiful and historically intact, but thermally demanding. Heat escapes rapidly through close-studded timber frames, and draughts find every gap around windows that are themselves part of the building's listed character. The Passivhaus Institute's EnerPHit standard offers a rigorous, certified approach to transforming thermal performance without compromising the external character that the conservation area protects. Internal wall insulation carefully detailed around timber frames, improved airtightness, and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery can make a home that has stood for centuries genuinely comfortable and economical to run. We have lived in a home designed to Passivhaus standards, so we understand this difference not as theory but as daily experience — warm, quiet, settled.
Extension Design in Newent's conservation area means working within the discipline of the town's existing scale and materials. Many homes sit on the medieval burgage plots that still define the layout of the centre — long, narrow sites that limit what is possible in one direction but open up creative opportunities in another. A rear extension that respects the roofline and uses materials that complement the existing building, a garden room that borrows light and views — these are the kinds of interventions that work with the grain of the town rather than against it. Forest of Dean District Council will expect any extension within the conservation area to sit comfortably alongside its neighbours, and that discipline, handled well, tends to produce better architecture than freedom ever does.
Sustainable Design is the principle that connects everything we do at Gresford Architects, and in Newent it carries a particular weight. A building with a three-hundred-year-old timber frame sitting cold and empty because it costs a fortune to heat is not sustainable, no matter how much embodied carbon it has saved over the centuries. What matters is bringing that building into comfortable, economical use — working with orientation, thermal mass and the kind of detail that keeps medieval timbers safe while the home becomes genuinely joyful to live in. PassivHaus Design takes these principles to their most rigorous standard, delivering homes that need almost no conventional heating — our project The Deerings demonstrates what this achieves when paired with real architectural ambition. For New Build Design, opportunities within Newent itself are shaped by the conservation area, but where sites do come forward we bring the same commitment to material honesty and environmental performance that the town's timber-framing tradition has always embodied. Beyond the town, the countryside that rises toward the Forest of Dean offers its own possibilities. Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route to exceptional new homes in rural locations where development would not normally be permitted — but only where the design is genuinely outstanding and sensitive to place. The rolling farmland and scattered woodland of this border country, with its views toward the Welsh hills, demands architecture that belongs there rather than simply occupying it.
Newent is a town built by people who understood timber, stone and the patience to work with both. Whether you are renovating a building whose medieval frame lies hidden behind a later facade, improving the thermal comfort of a Georgian townhouse, extending a family home on one of the town's historic plots, or imagining something new in the countryside beyond, we would welcome the conversation.