Old Sodbury is a village that reads like a cross-section through time. Above sits the Iron Age hillfort, eleven acres of double ramparts on the Cotswold escarpment edge, commanding views west across the Severn Vale to Wales. Below, the Church of St John the Baptist holds its ground partway up the slope, its Norman south doorway and round-arched nave speaking of eight centuries of continuous worship. And the village itself settles into the valley of the Frome, where the same oolitic limestone that forms the escarpment became the walls, lintels, and boundary stones of homes built over generations. What draws me to a place like this is the directness of that relationship — the geology beneath your feet becoming the architecture around you, each generation reading the same stone and finding new ways to shape it.
Award-winning Architects in Old Sodbury
Heritage Expertise Built on Deep Knowledge
I am a member of SPAB — the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings — and that membership reflects something central to how we work at Gresford Architects. Understanding old buildings is not a sideline for us; it is foundational. My wife Phoebe is a conservation architect, and between us we bring a respect for historic fabric that goes beyond regulation and into genuine care for how buildings age, breathe, and perform. I founded the practice in London in 2006, and we now work from our studio in Oxford with clients across the country. Our RIBA East Award for The Deerings, a Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, and our shortlisting for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the 2018 Building Design Awards reflect a practice that pursues both heritage sensitivity and building-physics rigour — the kind of combination that a village like Old Sodbury, with its Grade II* listed medieval buildings and its position within the Cotswolds National Landscape, genuinely requires.
Architectural Services on the Cotswold Escarpment
Renovations in Old Sodbury begin with reading the building. The Tudor House on Hatter's Lane is a fourteenth-century open hall house with raised cruck trusses — one of the most significant medieval domestic structures in the parish, now Grade II* listed. It tells you something important about the building traditions here: timber-framed construction predating the later shift to the Cotswold stone that dominates the village today. Renovating homes in Old Sodbury means understanding that layered history, recognising where a seventeenth-century stone skin wraps an older timber frame, where later extensions altered the structural logic of the original, and where well-intentioned twentieth-century repairs may have introduced materials that now work against the building. South Gloucestershire Council handles planning for the parish and will expect any proposals affecting listed buildings to demonstrate thorough understanding of the structure and its setting within the wider village.
EnerPHit — the certified retrofit standard for existing buildings — addresses the energy performance of these older homes without compromising the fabric that gives them their character. Solid limestone walls on the Cotswold escarpment face particular exposure: the westerly winds that sweep across the Severn Vale bring driving rain, and the temperature swings between a sheltered valley floor and an exposed hilltop are significant. Any insulation strategy must account for the way limestone breathes, allowing moisture to pass through rather than trapping it where it will cause decay. Our approach starts with detailed building-physics modelling — mapping heat loss paths, moisture movement, and airtightness opportunities — and arrives at solutions that are specific to each building. The result is a home that is dramatically warmer and more efficient, with energy costs a fraction of what they were, while the stone walls continue to do what they have always done.
Extension Design within the Cotswolds National Landscape carries particular responsibility. The designation protects this landscape for its outstanding natural beauty, and new building work must demonstrate that it conserves and enhances that quality. In Old Sodbury, this means responding to the escarpment setting — the way the village sits in the lee of the ridge, the long views west that open up between buildings, the scale and grain of the stone-built cottages and farmhouses. A well-designed extension here does not compete with the landscape but draws on it, framing the views that make this place extraordinary, working with the local limestone palette, and finding a contemporary expression that respects the village's established character without resorting to pastiche. Sustainable Design runs through every decision we make, from the orientation of glazing to the sourcing of materials, because a building that performs well environmentally is also a building that will last.
For new homes in Old Sodbury, PassivHaus Design offers the highest standard of comfort and energy performance through superinsulation, airtightness, and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery — buildings that are as rigorous in their performance as the National Landscape designation is in its protection of the setting. New Build Design within or near the village would need to sit carefully within the established grain, responding to the proportions and materials that have accumulated over centuries. And for exceptional rural sites on the escarpment or in the surrounding countryside, Paragraph 84 provides a planning route for truly outstanding homes where the quality of the architecture itself justifies development — the kind of challenge where sustainability, landscape sensitivity, and design ambition must all work together.
If you are considering work on a home in Old Sodbury — whether a sensitive renovation, an extension that makes the most of its escarpment setting, or an energy retrofit that brings an older building into the twenty-first century — we would welcome the conversation. This is a village where the stone beneath the ground and the walls around you are the same thing, and architecture here should honour that continuity.