There is something quietly satisfying about a village called Stone that is, in fact, built of stone. The name goes back to the Old English for a boundary marker, and the material itself is still there in the walls of the oldest buildings — in the Norman nave of St John the Baptist's Church, in the rubble and ashlar of cottages clustered around the crossroads where Eythrope Road meets the A418. The church, consecrated in 1273, is a building I find myself drawn to whenever I think about how architecture accumulates meaning: a Norman doorway with its zig-zag arch, thirteenth-century transepts, a fourteenth-century tower crowned with a later saddleback roof and carved corbel heads peering down at the churchyard. Eight centuries of building, each generation adding to what came before without erasing it. That is the kind of place that sharpens your thinking as an architect — it reminds you that the best work is always in conversation with what already exists.
Award-winning Architects in Stone
Why Clients Across the Country Trust Gresford Architects
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we are now based in Oxford, working with clients nationwide. We are RIBA Chartered and ARB registered, and our memberships of SPAB, the Passivhaus Trust and The Green Register reflect the breadth of what we do — from careful conservation work to some of the most energy-efficient homes being built in Britain today. Our Passivhaus project The Deerings won a RIBA East Award in 2018, and our renovation of a Grade II listed barn in Buckinghamshire demonstrated that heritage sensitivity and modern performance can coexist in the same building. Our work has featured in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine and The Modern House Journal, and in 2025 I served as a judge at the British Homes Awards. Stone is a village that rewards the kind of attention we bring — a place where understanding material, craft and context is not optional but essential.
Architectural Services Shaped by Stone's Character
The conservation area at the heart of Stone covers the historic core around the church, the junction and the handful of older buildings that define the village's character — stone walls, red brick, clay tile roofs, the occasional thatch. Renovations here demand a particular discipline. You need to read the building first, understand how it was constructed and how it has changed, before proposing anything new. My SPAB membership has taught me to read a building's own logic before proposing change — to understand how it was made and how it has evolved, and only then to intervene with care. For homeowners in Stone whose properties sit within or adjacent to the conservation area, we bring that discipline to every project, whether it is restoring original features, opening up a ground floor or rethinking how a cottage works for a modern family. Buckinghamshire Council will expect any proposal to respect the conservation area's character, and we work closely with their heritage and planning teams — partly to navigate policy, but more importantly to ensure that new work is grounded in genuine understanding of what makes Stone worth protecting.
EnerPHit offers a way to bring older homes in Stone up to modern thermal performance standards without compromising what makes them worth keeping. Based on Passivhaus principles but designed specifically for retrofit, EnerPHit addresses the insulation, airtightness and ventilation of an existing building in a way that respects its construction — no internal condensation, no trapped moisture, no damage to historic fabric. For a village where the older housing stock includes stone-built and brick cottages that were never designed for twenty-first-century energy costs, this is a practical and sensitive route to comfort, lower bills and reduced carbon emissions.
Extension Design is often the most logical step for homes in Stone that need more space. Whether the brief is a kitchen that opens to the garden, an extra bedroom or a home office, an extension should respect the existing building's proportion and material — the red brick or stone that defines this village's character. We design extensions that feel as though they have always belonged, bringing light and new spatial flow without competing with the original building. For properties within the conservation area, any addition must complement the host building and satisfy the planning scrutiny that comes with that designation. Beyond the conservation boundary, there is more freedom to explore contemporary gestures, but our approach remains the same — every extension is a piece of architecture in its own right, not an afterthought bolted onto the side of an existing house.
Sustainable Design runs through everything we do at Gresford Architects. It is the starting point, not an add-on — the conviction that buildings which use energy and materials efficiently are also more comfortable to inhabit, more economical to run and more joyful to live in. For New Build Design, whether on infill sites within the village or on the edges where Stone meets the wider Aylesbury Vale landscape, we design homes that sit lightly on their ground and work with their surroundings rather than against them. PassivHaus Design takes that ambition to its most rigorous conclusion: continuous insulation, airtight construction and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, creating homes that use a fraction of the energy a standard new build requires. Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route for those seeking to create an exceptional home in the open countryside around Stone, where the quality of the architecture itself must justify the granting of planning permission.
Clough Williams-Ellis left his mark on Stone with the village hall he designed in 1910, proof that even a small village can attract an architect with ambition. Whatever you are considering here — a sensitive renovation, an extension that transforms how you live, or something entirely new — we would welcome the chance to talk about it.