Most people hear Sandhurst and think immediately of the Academy — that long, commanding facade of Old College, originally designed by James Wyatt and completed by John Sanders, its Greek Revival columns set against the Surrey and Berkshire heathland, constructed between 1807 and 1812 to project institutional authority in stone. It is a building that makes a statement about permanence and purpose. But what interests me as an architect is the town that grew up alongside it — the domestic Sandhurst, where Victorian country houses appeared after the railway arrived in 1849, where the post-war decades brought family housing into clearings between the heath, and where people today are living in homes that carry the accumulated decisions of every generation that built here. The architecture of Sandhurst is not defined by one famous institution alone. It is a story of how a small settlement adapted, expanded and found its own character in the shadow of something much larger.
Award-winning Architects in Sandhurst
Why Clients Choose Gresford Architects
Gresford Architects is an RIBA chartered and ARB registered practice that I founded in London in 2006, driven by a belief that sustainability and architectural beauty are not competing ambitions but natural partners — that a building can be comfortable, economical to run and joyful to live in, all at once. We work with clients across the country, bringing nearly two decades of experience to every project. Our Passivhaus home The Deerings won a RIBA East Award in 2018, and that same year I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards. In 2025, I was invited to judge the British Homes Awards. Our work has been published in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine, The Modern House Journal and the RIBA Journal, and I am a member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the Passivhaus Trust and The Green Register — a combination of heritage understanding and environmental expertise that shapes everything we do.
Architectural Services for Homes in Sandhurst
Extension Design is often where conversations with homeowners in Sandhurst begin. Much of the town's residential fabric dates from the mid-to-late twentieth century — houses built for a particular kind of family life that has since evolved. Rooms that felt adequate in the 1960s or 1970s no longer accommodate how families work, cook, socialise and study today. Planning applications in Sandhurst go through Bracknell Forest Council, and understanding their expectations around scale, materials and the relationship between existing and new structures is part of the design process from the start. The best extensions do not simply add square footage. They reimagine how a home connects to its garden, how light moves through its spaces, and how the whole building works as one coherent place rather than an original house with something bolted on.
For homes in Sandhurst built in the post-war period, EnerPHit offers a way to fundamentally transform how a house performs. The Passivhaus retrofit standard addresses the building fabric itself — insulation, airtightness, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery — to achieve measurable, lasting improvements in comfort and energy efficiency. A house that is draughty in winter, expensive to heat and reliant on ageing systems can become a home where a stable temperature is maintained year-round — without the fuel bills that come with heating a poorly insulated structure against Berkshire's damp winters. Sustainable Design is the thread that runs through all of our work, and in Sandhurst, where so much of the housing stock dates from an era when thermal performance was barely considered, the practical case for retrofit is as compelling as the environmental one.
Sandhurst also contains buildings that demand a more careful hand. The Grade II* listed Church of St Michael, designed by G.E. Street in 1853 in an Early English style with its distinctive broached spire, is a reminder that the town has heritage worth protecting. Renovations to older properties — whether Victorian houses that arrived with the railway age or later buildings that have acquired character through decades of use — require an architect who listens to what the building is telling them. My membership of SPAB reflects that commitment: understanding historic fabric, its materials and its structural logic, before proposing any change.
PassivHaus Design takes our commitment to performance to its fullest expression, creating homes where thermal comfort, air quality and energy consumption are considered from the very first sketch. For New Build Design, whether on infill sites within the town or on land at its edges, the opportunity is to create something that responds to its neighbours and its setting while performing to standards the original housing stock could never have achieved. The heathland and woodland around Sandhurst — including the protected landscapes of Wildmoor Heath and the Sandhurst to Owlsmoor Bogs and Heaths SSSI — give the surrounding countryside a particular character, and Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route to building an exceptional home in the rural landscape beyond the settlement boundary. The design must be truly outstanding and sensitive to its setting, but that is precisely the kind of challenge we welcome — architecture that sits within a landscape rather than being imposed upon it.
Whether you are extending a family home to make room for how life is lived now, transforming a mid-century house into something that performs as well as it deserves to, caring for one of the town's older buildings, or building something new on the edge of the Berkshire heathland, we would welcome the chance to talk about what your home could become.