The ancient pollards on Naphill Common tell you something about what lasts. These oaks and beech trees — some of the most natural woodland remaining in the Chilterns — were shaped by centuries of practical use, cut back for timber and firewood under commoners' rights that stretch deep into the medieval period. They are not pristine. They carry the marks of every intervention. And yet they endure, broader and more characterful for having been worked. That is a quality I look for in architecture too: buildings shaped by honest purpose, designed to weather time rather than resist it. Naphill and Walter's Ash sit along the ridge of the Chiltern Hills, two villages that have grown together while keeping their own identities — Naphill stretching along its Main Road in a linear pattern, Walter's Ash clustered around the presence of RAF High Wycombe, which began construction in the beech woods in 1938 and has occupied the site since 1940. The landscape holds both the ancient and the institutional, the handmade and the planned, and any new architecture here needs to read that layering carefully.
Award-winning Architects in Walter's Ash/Naphill
Sustainable Architecture Rooted in the Chilterns
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we are now based in Oxford, working with clients across the country. Sustainability has been central to the practice from the beginning — not as an add-on but as the foundation of how we think about buildings. I am a member of the Passivhaus Trust and accredited with The Green Register, and was shortlisted as Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards in 2018. That commitment comes from a simple conviction: that buildings which use energy and materials as efficiently as possible are not only kinder to the planet but also more comfortable to inhabit, more economical to run and more joyful to live in. We are ARB registered and RIBA Chartered, and our work ranges from Passivhaus new builds to careful heritage restorations — including The Great Barn, a Grade II listed building in Buckinghamshire where traditional craft met contemporary conservation thinking. In a landscape as sensitive as the Chilterns National Landscape, that breadth of experience matters.
Designing for Homes in Walter's Ash and Naphill
Extension Design is where many projects in these villages begin. Much of the housing stock dates from the mid-twentieth century — some built for RAF families stationed at High Wycombe, others part of the steady residential growth that followed the war. These are solid, well-located homes on generous plots, but their original layouts rarely reflect how families live today. The ridgeline setting adds a dimension you do not get in the valley: rooflines here are visible against the sky, and the relationship between building and tree cover shapes how any addition is read from the lane, from the common, from the footpaths that thread through the beech hangers. Within the Chilterns National Landscape, that visibility means every material choice and every roofline carries weight. We design extensions that bring light deeper into the plan, open up the connection between kitchen, living space and garden, and use materials that sit comfortably within the Chilterns palette without imitating what is already there. The aim is always a home that feels as though it has always been this way, even when the addition is unmistakably contemporary.
EnerPHit offers a route to transforming the thermal performance of an older home without altering its external character. For the post-war houses that make up much of Walter's Ash and Naphill, this is particularly relevant — solid walls, single glazing and limited insulation were standard, and the hilltop exposure of the Chiltern ridge makes heat loss more pronounced than in sheltered valley positions. An EnerPHit retrofit upgrades insulation, seals the building envelope and introduces mechanical ventilation with heat recovery. The result is a home that stays warm in winter and cool in summer, with a fraction of the energy bills.
We design for sustainability from the first conversation, not as an afterthought but as the foundation — orientation and natural ventilation, responsibly sourced materials, low-carbon construction methods. Naphill Common sits at the centre of the community, a 71-hectare SSSI where chalk grassland, ancient woodland and evidence of medieval iron smelting shape what the landscape has become. Any building that sits alongside that inheritance needs to improve it, not diminish it. That is what sustainability means here: architecture that has been considered as carefully as the centuries of land management that surround it.
Renovations in these villages often involve properties with more history than their appearance suggests. Naphill House, a Grade II listed building dated 1761 and originally used as a workhouse, is built in red and vitreous brick with a hipped tile roof — a reminder that even in a village best known for its common and its woodland, there are buildings that demand careful, informed conservation. Our membership of SPAB — the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings — shapes how we approach this work: understanding the building before proposing changes, repairing rather than replacing, and respecting the accumulated decisions of previous generations.
For those considering something entirely new, New Build Design and PassivHaus Design represent the standard we work to — homes that achieve stable internal temperatures, minimal energy consumption and outstanding comfort from day one. Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route for truly exceptional homes in rural locations, and the landscape around Naphill and Walter's Ash, where the beech hangers meet open farmland and the Chiltern escarpment drops away to the vale below, is precisely the kind of setting where the quality of architecture must justify its presence.
Whether you are extending a family home on the ridge, retrofitting a post-war house for the next generation, or considering a new home in the Chilterns landscape around Walter's Ash and Naphill, we would welcome a conversation about your project. The best buildings, like the best trees, are shaped by purpose — and they last because they were made with care.