In 1511 a great fire tore through Sherston and destroyed most of the village. What replaced the lost timber buildings was stone — the warm oolitic limestone that sits beneath the Cotswold edge, quarried locally and laid by masons who understood that this material, handled well, would outlast anything they had built before. Walking Sherston's broad High Street today, past the former Angel Hotel with its sixteenth-century core and the three-gabled addition of 1648, past Court House rebuilt around 1680, you are looking at a village that was remade with permanence in mind. That instinct — choosing materials and methods that endure — is one I share. It is at the heart of how we practise architecture, and it makes Sherston a place I find deeply compelling to work in.
Award-winning Architects in Sherston
Working With Sherston's Architectural Character
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 the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and accredited on The Green Register, and for a conservation village like Sherston those credentials matter. My wife Phoebe is a conservation architect, and her work has deepened my respect for the careful, evidence-led approach that historic buildings demand. We won the RIBA East Award for The Deerings, a certified Passivhaus in Hertfordshire, and were shortlisted for a RIBA South Award for The Old Water Tower. In 2018 I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards. We have worked on projects from The Great Barn in Buckinghamshire — a Grade II listed barn restoration — to modern Passivhaus new builds, and that range is exactly what a village like Sherston needs: an architect comfortable with both the old and the new, who sees no contradiction between conservation and sustainability.
How We Can Help With Your Project in Sherston
Renovations are where much of our work in a village like Sherston would begin. The conservation area, designated in 1973, covers most of the village, and the buildings within it span centuries — from the Balcony House, which survived the 1511 fire with its fourteenth-century origins intact, to the modest stone cottages built in the decades that followed. Renovating a stone building in Sherston means understanding how the original materials breathe, how lime mortar behaves differently from cement, and how interventions can improve a home without erasing the qualities that make it worth preserving. Wiltshire Council, as the local planning authority, applies careful scrutiny to proposals within the conservation area, and we welcome that — a well-prepared application that demonstrates genuine understanding of a building's character will always be more persuasive than one that treats heritage as an obstacle.
EnerPHit — the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard — offers a rigorous framework for improving the thermal performance of older homes without compromising their character. Many stone properties in Sherston have solid walls, single-glazed windows and draughty floors, and their owners face the uncomfortable choice between high energy bills and interventions that might harm the fabric. EnerPHit resolves that tension by working with the building's existing structure — internal insulation where appropriate, improved airtightness, and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery to maintain fresh air without losing heat. Our EnerPHit retrofit of The Old Orchard in Oxfordshire, featured in The Modern House Journal and The Spaces, showed what is possible when you combine Passivhaus rigour with genuine sensitivity to an existing building.
Extension Design in Sherston requires particular care. The Cotswold limestone that defines the village is not merely decorative — it is the material language of this place, and any extension must speak it fluently. That does not mean pastiche; it means understanding scale, proportion, the depth of window reveals, the way a stone wall meets a roof. The best extensions in conservation settings are those that are clearly of their time while respecting what came before, and the Sherston Neighbourhood Plan, made in 2019 with overwhelming community support, reinforces the expectation that new development should complement the village's established character.
Sustainable Design runs through every service we offer. For homes in Sherston, sustainability is not a separate consideration — it is embedded in the choice to renovate rather than demolish, to insulate rather than overheat, to design for decades rather than years. PassivHaus Design applies these principles at their most rigorous for new homes, achieving exceptional comfort with minimal energy input through superinsulation, controlled airtightness and heat recovery ventilation. New Build Design on sites within or adjoining the village — including the mixed-use allocation supported by the neighbourhood plan — gives us the chance to demonstrate that contemporary architecture can sit comfortably alongside Sherston's historic core. And in the open countryside beyond the village, where the Cotswold edge rolls westward towards Gloucestershire, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a pathway for homes of outstanding architectural quality in locations where standard planning policy would not normally permit development.
If you are considering a project in Sherston — whether restoring a listed building, extending a stone cottage within the conservation area, or building something new on the Cotswold edge — we would welcome the conversation.