There are not many villages in England that can claim to have helped build a university city. Weldon can. The limestone quarried from the fields south and south-west of the village has been used in construction since at least the medieval period — probably since Roman times. Weldon stone travelled by barge to Cambridge, where it was set into the walls of Trinity College and King's College Chapel. It was cut for Rockingham Castle's gatehouse. And it shaped the village too. Walk through Great Weldon and the material is everywhere: in the coursed limestone cottages, in the ashlar dressings of the Grade I listed Church of St Mary with its early thirteenth-century origins, and in the circular walls of the Round House on School Lane — a lock-up from the 1700s, now a scheduled ancient monument. The same geological seam that produced a chapel ceiling in Cambridge also produced a village lock-up. The stone does not discriminate. It serves whatever is asked of it, and it lasts.
Award-winning Architects in Weldon
Designing for a Village in Transition
Weldon sits on the eastern edge of Corby, and in recent years it has experienced substantial growth. The Weldon Park development is bringing around a thousand new homes to land south-east of the village, forming part of the wider North East Corby Sustainable Urban Extension. That scale of change brings both opportunity and responsibility. New Build Design here needs to do more than meet housing targets — it needs to create homes that belong, that draw on the limestone character of the older village rather than ignoring it. We approach every new build with the conviction that homes should be comfortable, designed to last, and built to use energy and materials as efficiently as possible.
Sustainable Design is the framework within which every decision is made, from site orientation and passive solar gain to material selection and ventilation strategy. PassivHaus Design takes that commitment to its most rigorous expression, engineering the building fabric so precisely that conventional heating becomes virtually unnecessary. Our project at The Deerings in Hertfordshire, a certified Passivhaus home that won a RIBA East Award in 2018, demonstrates what is achievable when sustainability is treated as an opportunity rather than a constraint. For anyone planning a new home in Weldon, these standards offer a way to build something genuinely of this era — comfortable, energy-efficient, and built with the same care for longevity that the medieval quarrymen understood instinctively.
Working With What Weldon Already Has
The older heart of the village — the limestone cottages, the church, the Round House — deserves architecture that respects what is already there. Renovations to traditional stone buildings in Weldon require a particular understanding of how these structures work: lime mortar joints that allow moisture to move, stone walls that breathe, timber elements that have been doing their job for centuries. My membership of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings reflects a conviction that the best renovations start with understanding the building as it is. North Northamptonshire Council oversees planning here, and any work to a listed building will need to demonstrate sensitivity to the village's limestone character.
For homeowners in Weldon looking for more space, Extension Design offers a way to stay in the village rather than leave it. A well-considered extension responds to the scale, proportions and materials of the existing house — in the older parts of Weldon, that means working with the local limestone palette and designing something that feels like a natural continuation rather than an afterthought. EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, offers the most rigorous route to improving the thermal performance of an existing home without compromising the breathable construction that keeps traditional stone walls healthy — reducing heat loss, improving comfort and lowering energy bills while ensuring long-term integrity.
Beyond the village boundary, the open countryside falls within the scope of Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework, offering a route for architecturally exceptional homes in the landscape where the design itself must justify the departure from normal policy.
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we are now based in Oxford, working with clients across the country. I am an ARB-registered and RIBA-chartered architect, a member of SPAB and the Passivhaus Trust, and accredited by The Green Register. I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the 2018 Building Design Awards and served as a judge for the British Homes Awards in 2025. If you are planning a new home, an extension, a renovation or an energy retrofit in Weldon, we would welcome the conversation. Get in touch.