There is something striking about standing in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin in Upavon and knowing that overhead, more than a century ago, the first military pilots in Britain were learning to fly. The Central Flying School was established here in 1912, and the graves of young aviators killed in those early flying accidents still lie among the headstones. Yet the church itself reaches back far further — a Grade I listed building with a twelfth-century chancel and an octagonal Norman font carved with an Annunciation scene that someone shaped by hand eight hundred years before those biplanes took to the air. That layering of time is what draws me to Upavon. This is a village where thatched eighteenth-century cottages line the High Street, where the River Avon threads through the valley as it leaves the Vale of Pewsey and meets the north scarp of Salisbury Plain, and where the architecture carries the quiet accumulation of centuries in its walls. Buildings like these deserve to be understood before they are touched, and that understanding is what we bring to every project.
Award-winning Architects in Upavon
Why Homeowners in Upavon Trust Gresford Architects
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we are now based in Oxford, working with clients across the country on projects where heritage sensitivity and technical ambition are not opposing forces but the same discipline. We won the RIBA East Award for The Deerings, a certified Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, and were shortlisted for the RIBA South Awards for The Old Water Tower, where the challenge was to reimagine an unusual historic structure without losing what made it worth saving. I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards in 2018 and served as a judge for the British Homes Awards in 2025. As a member of SPAB and accredited by The Green Register, I approach buildings the way their builders would have understood them — as structures that flex with the seasons, breathe through their walls, and carry the accumulated knowledge of the people who made them. In a conservation area like Upavon, that philosophy is not an optional extra — it is the starting point for every conversation. Our work has been featured in Dezeen, The Modern House Journal and Grand Designs Magazine.
Designing for a Village Shaped by the Avon Valley
Renovations are at the heart of what many homeowners in Upavon need. The village sits within a conservation area designated in 1981, and with thirty-four listed buildings — from the Manor House, which began as a fifteenth-century dwelling and has been altered and extended over five hundred years, to the Grade II listed Antelope Inn with its blue vitrified brickwork and stone quoins — the building stock here carries real historic weight. Renovating these properties means understanding traditional construction: lime mortars that flex with seasonal movement, thatch that breathes over timber-framed walls, rubble stone and brick that have found their own equilibrium over generations. As a member of SPAB, I believe in repairing rather than replacing, in letting the building teach you how it works before imposing a modern solution. The Victorian restorations of St Mary's by T.H. Wyatt and J.P. Seddon in 1875–6 show that Upavon has a long history of careful intervention — the nave rebuilt, new roofs fitted, windows replaced, yet the twelfth-century chancel and its Norman font preserved through it all.
Extension Design is often the most natural route for families in Upavon who need more space but want to remain in the village. Wiltshire Council, as the local planning authority, will expect any extension within the conservation area to sit comfortably alongside the thatched cottages and brick-dressed buildings that define the High Street and the lanes running down to the river. We design extensions that respond to their context — matching the scale, rhythm and material palette of what is already there while bringing genuine improvements in daylight, insulation and the way internal spaces connect to the garden and the valley landscape beyond. Where a property backs onto the Avon, there is an opportunity to design with the water in mind, opening views and creating a stronger relationship between inside and out.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, offers a rigorous framework for improving energy performance in older homes without touching the external fabric that the conservation area protects. For the thatched cottages and rubble-stone farmhouses in Upavon, where Wiltshire Council rightly guards external appearance, EnerPHit works by concealing insulation within the existing structure, improving airtightness at junctions and openings, and introducing mechanical ventilation with heat recovery so comfort is maintained without opening windows to the wind that sweeps across the valley from Salisbury Plain. Invisible improvement, visible fidelity to the place.
Sustainable Design runs through everything we do, and in Upavon it connects naturally to a building tradition that has always drawn on what the valley provides. New Build Design offers the chance to get energy performance right from the start — orientation for solar gain on the south-facing slopes above the Avon, fabric-first insulation engineered for the damp chalk-valley climate, materials chosen for longevity as much as for how they sit against the thatched rooflines and brick dressings of the existing village. PassivHaus Design takes that ambition to its highest standard, virtually eliminating conventional heating through exceptional airtightness and heat recovery ventilation. Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route for truly exceptional new homes in the open countryside, and the chalk downland that rises on either side of the valley around Upavon — expansive, ancient, shaped by millennia of grazing and cultivation — is a landscape where architecture of genuine quality could earn its place.
If you are considering a project in Upavon — whether bringing an older home gently into the twenty-first century, extending to make the most of a riverside setting, or building something new that belongs in this valley — we would welcome the conversation.