On the southern edge of Walgrave, a Scheduled Monument preserves the earthworks of a medieval village extension that did not last. The settlement expanded, then contracted, and the evidence of that failed ambition lies in the ground — hollow ways, house platforms, the outline of a community that tried to grow and then retreated to its original core. Medieval fishponds and seventeenth-century garden remains survive alongside the settlement earthworks, recording successive layers of landscape management. What interests me as an architect is the lesson the earthworks carry: not all building endures, and what survives is usually what was best placed and best built. The village that remains — Waldgrave in the Domesday survey of 1086, with the Church of St Peter on high ground to the south and the older houses along the lanes around it — is the settlement that the landscape sustained.
Award-winning Architects in Walgrave
Conservation Understanding, Environmental Ambition
Working in a village where the ground itself records what lasted and what did not requires an architect who understands the difference. I am an ARB-registered and RIBA Chartered architect and a member of SPAB — the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings — whose philosophy of careful repair runs through everything our practice does. As a member of the Passivhaus Trust and The Green Register, I bring the same rigour to energy performance that my SPAB training brings to heritage. I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we now work from Oxford with clients across the country. The Deerings, a certified Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, won the RIBA East Award in 2018, the year I was also a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards. In 2025 I was invited to judge the British Homes Awards. Our projects have been published in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine and The Modern House Journal.
Architectural Services in the Village Core
Renovations in Walgrave engage with a building stock that represents the village's surviving core — the buildings that endured when the medieval extension did not. The Church of St Peter sits on high ground with its fourteenth-century ground plan, broach spire and three-bay nave, restored in the 1860s when a clerestory was added and the roofs replaced. The Rectory, built in 1687, stands to the east. The Baptist Chapel, founded before 1700 and rebuilt in 1786, sits in the Northamptonshire nonconformist tradition — a plain, assured building that is slightly wider than it is long. The stone cottages and houses throughout the village use the local limestone. West Northamptonshire Council handles planning for the parish. Through my membership of SPAB, I approach these buildings with the understanding that solid stone walls manage moisture through their mass and their lime mortar — and that any renovation must work with that behaviour.
Extension Design in Walgrave should respond to the stone character and modest proportions that give the village its coherence. The relationship between the buildings, the lanes and the high ground around the church contributes to a settlement that reads as a whole — and an extension should respect that reading. Whether the brief is a ground-floor extension that connects the house to the garden, a garden room, or additional space above, the design should make the whole building feel more resolved while sitting comfortably within the village fabric.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, addresses the thermal performance of older homes without compromising their character. The stone cottages in Walgrave present the familiar challenge of solid-walled construction: thick walls with no insulation, draughty junctions, and a building envelope designed for ventilation rather than thermal retention. Vapour-open insulation, careful airtightness detailing, and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery can transform them — warmer, quieter, dramatically cheaper to run — while the stone facades continue to weather as they always have.
Sustainable Design connects every project we take on, and in Walgrave the earthworks offer a reminder that development which does not respect its setting does not last. The buildings that survived here are the ones that were well placed and well built. PassivHaus Design sets our benchmark for new construction, delivering certified comfort with minimal energy demand. New Build Design in Walgrave should sit within the established stone character of the surviving village core. For sites in the countryside around the parish, where the Scheduled Monument and the medieval fishponds record a longer history of occupation than the village alone suggests, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route to architecturally outstanding homes — but the design must demonstrate the quality that ensures it will still be standing in a century.
Walgrave shows you what lasts and what does not. If you are considering a project here, we would welcome the conversation.