There is something I find deeply satisfying about a village that was built from its own ground. The honey-coloured oolitic limestone that runs beneath Westwood has been quarried from the hillside above Avoncliff since at least the seventeenth century, and it shaped not only the terraces and crescents of nearby Bath but the village itself — the church, the manor house, the cottages that line the lanes of Lower and Upper Westwood. Stand beside St Mary the Virgin and look at the west tower that Pevsner called splendid, with its octagonal stair turret rising to a domed top, and you are looking at stone that came from the earth a few hundred metres away. The nave was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, and Thomas Horton added the tower in the early sixteenth century, using the same material his masons could see being cut from the quarry face. That directness — geology becoming architecture without pretence — is what draws me to this part of Wiltshire.
Award-winning Architects in Westwood
Trusted Architects With Deep Heritage Experience
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006 and we are now based in Oxford, working with clients across the country. I am ARB-registered and RIBA-chartered, and my membership of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings reflects how seriously we take the care of older buildings — not as museum pieces to be preserved behind glass, but as living structures that must be understood before they are changed. When Edgar Lister bought Westwood Manor in 1911 and spent years uncovering original wall panelling, ceilings and window glazing that had been hidden beneath later plaster, he was practising precisely the kind of patient, attentive restoration that we believe in. Our own work on The Great Barn in Buckinghamshire, a Grade II listed structure, demanded that same willingness to let the building reveal itself before imposing a design upon it. We won the RIBA East Award for The Deerings, a certified Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, and our projects have been published in Dezeen, The Modern House Journal and Grand Designs Magazine. 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.
Sensitive Architecture for Homes in Westwood
Renovations in Westwood call for a particular understanding of how Bath Stone ages and behaves. The parish contains around thirty-five listed buildings, from the Grade I listed manor house and church to the Grade II listed cottages, the New Inn and the Old Malthouse in Lower Westwood. These are not fragile relics — they are robust stone structures that have stood for centuries — but they were built with lime mortars and breathable construction that modern interventions must respect. Wiltshire Council, as the planning authority, will expect any renovation in Westwood to demonstrate sensitivity to the character of these buildings, and that begins with understanding how oolitic limestone weathers, how lime-pointed joints function differently from cement, and how the proportions of a fifteenth-century manor window differ from those of an eighteenth-century farmhouse. We approach each property by reading its construction history first, then designing changes that work with what is already there.
Extension Design for homes in Westwood requires careful material choices. The Bath Stone that defines the village's character is still quarried in the region, which means matching the existing palette is possible in a way that many other heritage villages cannot achieve — but matching stone alone is not enough. An extension to a listed cottage in Lower Westwood must respect the rooflines, window proportions and walling textures of the original building, while an extension to one of the later properties in Upper Westwood might take a more contemporary approach, using stone as a connecting material but allowing modern glazing and open planning to bring light into spaces that were originally conceived as more enclosed. The relationship between old and new is where the architecture lives, and getting that relationship right is what makes an extension feel like a natural part of the home rather than something added afterwards.
Sustainable Design runs through everything we do at Gresford Architects, and in a village built from local stone it connects to a principle that the original builders understood instinctively — using what the land provides, building to last, wasting nothing. EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, offers a rigorous method for improving the thermal performance of older homes in Westwood, but it must be applied with care. The breathable Bath Stone walls that keep these houses cool in summer and manage moisture through their lime-based construction cannot simply be sealed with modern insulation without risking condensation damage to the historic fabric. We design EnerPHit retrofits that work with the building's existing moisture dynamics, improving comfort and reducing energy bills without compromising the stone walls that have performed well for centuries. PassivHaus Design applies that same rigour to new construction, engineering homes for exceptional thermal comfort, minimal energy consumption and the kind of lasting quality that the best buildings in Westwood have always demonstrated.
New Build Design on appropriate sites near Westwood offers the opportunity to create homes that respond to this landscape of quarried hillsides, wooded valleys and honey-coloured stone. Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route for truly outstanding homes in the wider Wiltshire countryside, where the design must be exceptional enough to justify development in the open landscape — and where the geological character of the Avon valley, with its exposed limestone and steep-sided combes, sets a high standard for what sensitive design means.
If you are considering a project in Westwood — whether restoring a listed stone building, extending a family home, or exploring what a new house might be in this part of Wiltshire — we would welcome a conversation about how to begin.