Onley is a place defined by what it once was and what it is becoming. The medieval village that stood here from at least the thirteenth century gradually emptied — by the early eighteenth century it was described as a hamlet of seven shepherds' houses, and eventually it vanished altogether, leaving only earthworks in the fields. Those earthworks — hollow ways, tofts and crofts, fishponds, the unmistakable corrugations of ridge and furrow — are now a scheduled monument, the ground itself a record of a community that was here for centuries and then was not. What interests me as an architect is the other side of that story. The name survived, the land remained, and in the latter half of the twentieth century a new community began to form alongside the Oxford Canal and the neighbouring village of Barby. The homes here are modern — built within living memory rather than across centuries — and the architectural questions they raise are different from those in the heritage villages nearby, but no less worth asking carefully.
Award-winning Architects in Onley
A Practice Built for Every Kind of Home
Gresford Architects was founded in London in 2006 and is now based in Oxford, working 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. That combination reflects the range of our work — from the conservation-led restoration of a Grade II listed barn in Buckinghamshire to The Deerings, a certified Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire that won the RIBA East Award in 2018. I was named a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards, and in 2025 I served as a judge for the British Homes Awards. Our projects have been published in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine and The Modern House Journal. What runs through all of it is a conviction that every home deserves thoughtful design — that a 1970s house on a modern estate benefits from the same architectural attention as a listed cottage in a conservation area. The goal is always the same: a home that is comfortable, efficient and designed to last.
Architectural Services for Homes in Onley
Extension Design is often the starting point for homeowners in Onley. The housing here dates largely from the second half of the twentieth century — homes built on generous plots but designed for a different era of family life, working patterns and expectations. A ground-floor extension that opens the kitchen into a living space, brings the garden into the daily experience of the house, and transforms how the whole building functions can be achieved without leaving a place you already know. The Barby and Onley Neighbourhood Plan, adopted in 2025, sets out clear design expectations — that new development should enhance the positive attributes of the area and sit comfortably within its context. We approach extensions with the same discipline: responding to the proportions, materials and setting of the existing house, not just adding volume but improving how the building works as a whole.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, is particularly relevant for the type of housing found in Onley. Homes built in the 1960s and 1970s — even well-constructed ones — typically fall well short of modern thermal performance standards. Cavity walls with minimal or no insulation, early double-glazed windows that have lost their seal, draughty junctions between walls and roofs — these are common, and they translate directly into high energy bills and uncomfortable rooms. EnerPHit provides a rigorous, whole-building approach: continuous insulation, careful airtightness detailing, and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery that together transform the home's thermal envelope. The house looks the same from the street. Inside, it feels entirely different — warmer, quieter, and dramatically cheaper to run. We designed our own home to Passivhaus standards, so we understand from daily experience what a well-insulated, well-ventilated building actually delivers.
Sustainable Design underpins every project we take on, and in a place like Onley — where the housing stock is modern and the opportunities for improvement are significant — it means thinking about energy, materials and longevity as a single design problem. A replacement boiler is a short-term fix. A fabric-first retrofit that reduces heating demand by eighty per cent or more is a solution that lasts for the life of the building. That is the difference between maintenance and architecture, and it is where we believe design makes its greatest contribution to how people actually live.
Renovations in the broader Barby and Onley parish also bring opportunities to work with older buildings — the farmhouses and cottages that predate the modern housing, some of them dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, built from the local limestone that characterises this part of Northamptonshire. West Northamptonshire Council handles planning for the parish, and where these older properties are listed or fall within the neighbouring conservation area in Barby, the approach must be conservation-led. PassivHaus Design sets our benchmark for any new construction — certified thermal comfort with minimal energy demand. For New Build Design in the open countryside around Onley, where the earthworks of the medieval village are a scheduled monument and the landscape carries real archaeological weight, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route to architecturally outstanding homes — but the design must be sensitive to what lies beneath the surface as much as what stands upon it.
Onley is a place where a community once vanished and another has taken its place. If you are considering a project here — whether extending, retrofitting, renovating or building new — we would welcome the conversation. Good architecture, wherever it happens, starts with understanding the ground you are building on.