In 1764, a Watlington squire named Edward Horne decided his local church needed a spire. Rather than build one, he carved an eighty-two-metre triangle into the chalk escarpment of Watlington Hill, positioned so that from his house the white mark sat perfectly atop St Leonard's tower, completing the silhouette against the sky. It is a story about the relationship between landscape and architecture — how a building's setting shapes the way we see it, and how even the boldest gestures only work when they are precise about place. That instinct for context runs through everything we do at Gresford Architects, and Watlington is a town where context is unusually rich. This small market town sits at the foot of the Chilterns escarpment in South Oxfordshire, its medieval street plan still legible in Couching Street and Brook Street, its buildings a layered mix of flint, brick and chalk stone drawn from the geology beneath them. The Icknield Way passes close by — people have been reading this landscape and building on it for thousands of years.
Award-winning Architects in Watlington
Why Homeowners in Watlington 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 RIBA Chartered and ARB Registered, a member of SPAB, the Passivhaus Trust and The Green Register. Our project The Deerings won a RIBA East Award in 2018, the same year I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards, and in 2025 I served as a judge at the British Homes Awards. Our work has been featured in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine and The Modern House Journal. For a town like Watlington — where the conservation area covers much of the historic centre, where buildings range from sixteenth-century timber-framed cottages to Georgian townhouses and Victorian villas, and where the Chilterns National Landscape sets the wider context — that combination of heritage sensitivity and low-energy design expertise matters. Understanding how flint is laid, how brick bonds change across centuries, how chalk stone weathers, is not academic knowledge here. It is the starting point for any project that belongs.
Architectural Services Shaped by the Chilterns
Planning applications in Watlington are handled by South Oxfordshire District Council, with the conservation area appraisal setting out the character that proposals need to respect. The town has a concentration of listed buildings, including the Grade II* Town Hall — built in 1664 at the expense of Thomas Stonor, with a market hall below and grammar school above, and a clock mechanism from the workshops of Sir Christopher Wren. St Leonard's Church, also Grade II*, has Norman origins and was restored in 1877. Working sensitively with buildings of this age and significance is at the heart of our Renovations work. My wife Phoebe is a conservation architect, and her influence has deepened my understanding of how historic fabric ages, how each generation of alteration tells its own story, and how careful intervention can strengthen a building without erasing its past.
The older homes in Watlington — flint-and-brick cottages, chalk-stone terraces — were built to keep rain out and draughts moving, not to conserve energy. EnerPHit gives these buildings a certified pathway to genuine thermal comfort: better insulation, careful airtightness detailing, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery. The work sits with the existing structure rather than fighting it, so a cottage stays a cottage and simply stays warm — preserving the character that conservation area designation exists to protect.
For homeowners in Watlington looking to extend, Extension Design can make the most of the narrow-fronted, deep-plan properties that characterise much of the town centre — opening up rear elevations, drawing in natural light, creating spaces that connect more generously with gardens. Sustainable Design underpins every extension we plan, from orientation and material selection to the relationship between old fabric and new. PassivHaus Design applies the same fabric-first thinking to new construction — homes that stay warm in winter and cool in summer on a fraction of the energy most houses need. Where opportunities for New Build Design arise, we design homes that sit naturally in Watlington's material palette — brick, flint and tile — rather than defaulting to generic developer aesthetics.
The Chilterns landscape around Watlington is protected as a National Landscape, and for sites in the open countryside, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route for truly exceptional rural homes. The bar is high — design quality and landscape sensitivity must be demonstrable — but for the right client and the right site, it is a route worth exploring.
From the chalk beneath the town to the white mark on the hill above it, Watlington is a place where landscape and architecture have been in conversation for centuries. If you are considering a project here, we would welcome the chance to talk.