Walk down Cow Lane at the southern edge of Steeple Aston and you will find, perched on the skyline above the Cherwell valley, what appears to be the ruin of a medieval abbey. It is nothing of the sort. The structure is William Kent's Eyecatcher, built around 1740 as a sham ruin designed to be seen from the gardens at Rousham House on the far side of the valley — one of the earliest examples of architecture conceived not as shelter but as prospect, a building whose entire purpose is how it sits in the landscape. It is a piece of theatre, and a brilliant one, but what interests me more as an architect is what it reveals about Steeple Aston itself: a village where the relationship between buildings and their setting has been considered, argued over, and refined for centuries. The village grew up around the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, whose thirteenth-century arcades and fourteenth-century chancel arch still anchor the settlement to the north, and its conservation area — designated in 1988 — holds together a fabric of limestone and marlstone cottages, seventeenth-century farmhouses, and the remnants of the orchards that once gave this place its identity as an apple village.
Award-winning Architects in Steeple Aston
Why Homeowners in Steeple Aston Trust Gresford Architects
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we are now based at the Oxford Eco Centre in Osney Mead. I am an ARB-registered, RIBA Chartered architect, trained at the Mackintosh School of Architecture in Glasgow — a place that taught me to look closely at materials and context before reaching for a pencil. We won the RIBA East Award for The Deerings, a Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, and were shortlisted for a RIBA South Award for The Old Water Tower. I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the 2018 Building Design Awards, and served as a judge at the British Homes Awards in 2025. Our work has been published in Dezeen, The Modern House Journal, and Grand Designs Magazine. We are members of SPAB, the Passivhaus Trust, and The Green Register — affiliations that reflect how we practise, not just what we believe.
Architectural Services for Homes in Steeple Aston
Steeple Aston falls within the planning authority of Cherwell District Council, and the village's conservation area means that any alteration to the streetscape — whether a new extension, a replacement window, or a change of roofing material — is assessed for its impact on the character of the wider setting. This is not a constraint to be negotiated around; it is a discipline that produces better architecture. We welcome it.
Renovations here often begin with the village's older stone properties — cottages built in the local limestone and marlstone rubble that gives Steeple Aston its particular warmth of colour. Many of these buildings date from the seventeenth century, part of the Great Rebuilding that replaced earlier timber structures across this part of Oxfordshire. They have thick walls, uneven floors, and generations of incremental alteration layered one upon another. Our membership of SPAB informs how we approach these buildings: understanding what is there before deciding what to change, working with the grain of the structure rather than against it. My wife Phoebe is a conservation architect, and her influence runs through every heritage project we take on — a respect for the existing fabric that goes beyond compliance and into genuine care.
EnerPHit — the Passivhaus Institute's standard for retrofit — is well suited to the solid-walled properties that characterise much of Steeple Aston. These buildings hold thermal mass but often lack effective insulation, losing heat through stone walls, single-glazed windows, and draughty junctions that their original builders never had to worry about. EnerPHit provides a rigorous, measured approach to improving airtightness, insulation, and ventilation while respecting the external appearance that the conservation area protects. We have lived in a home designed to Passivhaus standards, so we understand this kind of performance from the inside — the stillness, the even temperature, the sense of a building that is genuinely working for you rather than against you.
Extension Design in Steeple Aston demands sensitivity to scale, materials, and the rhythm of the existing streetscape. The conservation area and the variety of building periods — from medieval church fabric to seventeenth-century farmhouses to later infill — set a context that rewards careful, considered design. We approach every extension as an opportunity to improve the whole house: better light, better flow between rooms, a stronger connection to the garden. The best extensions in a setting like this do not announce themselves; they settle in quietly and make the house feel more complete.
Sustainable Design and PassivHaus Design principles run through all our work, whether as a full certification pathway or as a performance-led approach to insulation, glazing, orientation, and material selection. For New Build Design — limited within the conservation area but possible on appropriate sites at the village edges — these principles ensure that any new home is comfortable, economical to run, and designed to endure. The Cherwell valley countryside beyond Steeple Aston, with its rolling farmland and wooded horizons, is the kind of landscape where Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework can apply, enabling architecturally exceptional homes in rural settings where the quality of the design itself is the justification for building.
Kent understood that buildings do not exist in isolation — that the way a structure meets its landscape is as much a part of its architecture as the walls themselves. That principle holds just as strongly for the homes in Steeple Aston as it did for his Eyecatcher on the ridge above the Cherwell. If you are considering work on a property in the village, we would welcome the conversation.