Shinfield is a village that carries two timescales at once. Around School Green and St Mary's Church, you can read centuries of gradual change — the Norman doorway still visible in the church wall, the seventeenth-century patterned brickwork of its tower, the old school founded by Richard Piggott in 1707, the quiet rhythm of a settlement that grew slowly around its green. And then, to the south and east, a different kind of change entirely: hundreds of new homes arriving as part of one of Berkshire's largest strategic development areas. What interests me as an architect is the tension between those two speeds. A village that has evolved over nine hundred years is now absorbing growth at a pace that demands real thought about what gets built, how it performs, and whether it will still feel like a place worth belonging to in fifty years' time. That is the kind of question architecture should answer, and it is the kind of work we care about most.
Award-winning Architects in Shinfield
An Award-Winning Practice Working Across the Country
Gresford Architects was founded in London in 2006 and is now based in Oxford, working with clients nationwide on projects that range from certified Passivhaus new builds to careful heritage renovations. I am a RIBA chartered and ARB registered architect, accredited by The Green Register and a member of the Passivhaus Trust — not as credentials to collect, but as commitments that shape the way we design. Our work on The Deerings, a Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, won a RIBA East Award in 2018, and I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards the same year. My wife Phoebe is a conservation architect, and her influence has deepened my respect for buildings that carry history — something that matters in a village like Shinfield, where a Grade I listed church stands within sight of construction sites that will reshape the parish. We are members of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and our projects have been featured in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine, The Modern House Journal and The Spaces. In 2025, I served as a judge at the British Homes Awards.
Designing for a Village in Transformation
Sustainable Design is the thread that connects everything we do, and in a village undergoing the scale of expansion that Shinfield is experiencing, it becomes more than a principle — it becomes a responsibility. The South of M4 Strategic Development Location has brought significant new housing to the parish. Planning applications in Shinfield are determined by Wokingham Borough Council, and the scale of that growth — hundreds of homes on former agricultural land — demands careful thought about what gets built and how it performs over the next century. For homeowners in Shinfield commissioning their own home rather than buying from a volume developer, New Build Design means setting a genuinely higher standard — homes that are comfortable, designed to last and to use energy and materials as efficiently as possible. PassivHaus Design delivers the most rigorous version of that ambition: exceptional thermal comfort, air quality that is genuinely fresh, and energy bills that are a fraction of what a conventionally built house demands. The Deerings proved what this standard achieves in practice — a home that stays warm in January, cool in July, and quiet enough to hear the garden.
For those already living in the older parts of the village, the conversation is different but no less important. Many homes in Shinfield date from the Victorian and Edwardian periods or the interwar years — solid houses built to the standards of their time. Extension Design is often where these projects begin: a kitchen that finally opens properly to the garden, a home office that works as more than an afterthought, or a first-floor addition that gives a growing family the space it needs. We approach every extension as an opportunity to rethink how the whole building performs — improving the thermal envelope, managing daylight, creating a better relationship between inside and out. The result is not simply larger, but more liveable.
Shinfield's older buildings deserve particular care. St Mary's Church, with its Norman origins and the tower rebuilt around 1630, is the most prominent, but the parish contains other listed structures including Hyde End Farmhouse. Renovations to properties like these require an understanding of how historic buildings were constructed — how they breathe, where they lose heat, and where improvements can be made without compromising the fabric that gives them value. EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, provides a rigorous framework for upgrading an existing building's thermal performance. We applied this approach to The Old Orchard in Oxfordshire, transforming a period property into a home that is genuinely comfortable year-round while respecting its original character. For homes in Shinfield built in the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s, the gains from a properly designed retrofit can be equally significant — lower energy bills, better air quality, rooms that are comfortable in every season.
The farmland to the west and south of Shinfield sits within a landscape shaped by London Clay geology and the gentle fall towards the River Loddon. For those with land in that setting, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a pathway for homes of genuine architectural distinction where standard development would not be permitted. The bar is high: a Paragraph 84 home must be distinguished not by size but by belonging — shaped by the specific landform, the materials of the Berkshire landscape, and the way light moves across the ground through the year.
Shinfield is at a moment of real change — rapid new development alongside homes that have served families well for decades, all set within a village centre that carries history back through centuries. That is the brief that excites us: how to make places worth belonging to, at every scale. If you are planning a project here, we would welcome the conversation.