Hardwick House has stood above the Thames at Whitchurch since the early sixteenth century, its flint base and red brick walls carrying the marks of every era since — Tudor origins, Civil War reconstruction, Georgian additions, Victorian alterations. It is a building that has never stopped being worked on, never stopped adapting to the needs and ambitions of whoever lived within it. That, to me, is what good architecture does. Not a fixed object but a continuing conversation between a building and its time. Whitchurch-on-Thames sits on the Oxfordshire bank of the river where the chalk escarpment of the Chilterns drops steeply to the water, with the toll bridge — one of only two remaining private toll crossings on the Thames — connecting the village to Pangbourne on the Berkshire side. The conservation area covers most of the village, and the dense arrangement of houses along the High Street, the grouping around St Mary's Church, and the wooded hillside rising behind them all create a place where every building exists in close dialogue with its neighbours and with the landscape itself.
Award-winning Architects in Whitchurch-on-Thames
Why Homeowners in Whitchurch-on-Thames Trust Gresford
I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006 and later moved the practice to Oxford, where we work from the Eco Centre in Osney Mead. We are members of SPAB — the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings — and that matters in a conservation village where listed buildings sit alongside more modest cottages, all sharing the same flint-and-brick material palette. We are also RIBA Chartered and ARB Registered, accredited on The Green Register, and members of the Passivhaus Trust. My wife Phoebe is a conservation architect, which has deepened my own understanding of how historic buildings work — how they breathe, how they age, how they respond to change. Our project The Old Water Tower was shortlisted for RIBA South Awards, our Passivhaus home The Deerings won a RIBA East Award, and I was a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the 2018 Building Design Awards. In 2025, I was invited to judge the British Homes Awards. We bring the same care to a flint cottage in Whitchurch-on-Thames that we bring to a new Passivhaus in open countryside — the conviction that buildings should be comfortable, designed to last and to use energy and materials as efficiently as possible.
Architecture Shaped by River, Chalk and Conservation
Whitchurch-on-Thames falls under South Oxfordshire District Council for planning, and the village sits within the Chilterns National Landscape — the former Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty — which brings an additional layer of protection to the setting. The conservation area and the National Landscape designation together mean that any project here must demonstrate sensitivity to character, materials and landscape impact. We see these frameworks not as obstacles but as the starting point for better design.
Extension Design is often the most practical route for homeowners in Whitchurch-on-Thames. The village's layout — dense along the High Street, tighter on the hillside — means that most gardens are modest, and adding space without destroying what makes the village cohere requires real care. We design extensions that sit well with their neighbours, continuing the rooflines and proportions that make the street read as a coherent whole, while introducing the insulation and daylighting that modern living demands. The flint and brick palette, the rhythm of the High Street, the wooded hillside rising behind — these are the constraints that become the opportunity. Sustainable Design runs through every decision: glazing positioned to catch the Thames light without overwhelming the quieter rhythm of the conservation area, walls insulated to reduce energy demand, ventilation controlled and mechanical rather than reliant on draughty windows.
For the older buildings in the village — and Whitchurch has Anglo-Saxon origins, with structures spanning several centuries — Renovations require a careful reading of the building before any intervention begins. The riverside location brings its own moisture challenges: flint walls absorb and release dampness in complex patterns, responding to the Thames proximity and seasonal water table fluctuations in ways that demand respect. The combination of flint, brick and tile found here resists the modern impulse to trap moisture behind plastic membranes; instead, older buildings in Whitchurch-on-Thames breathe, and any intervention must maintain that dialogue between wall and air. EnerPHit, the certified retrofit standard, offers a path through this: rather than sealing a building, it coordinates insulation, airtightness and mechanical ventilation to keep the walls breathing while delivering dramatic reductions in heat loss and running costs — exactly what older riverside cottages in conservation areas need.
PassivHaus Design and New Build Design offer a different kind of opportunity — the chance to create something that is honest about the era in which it is built while belonging to this particular landscape. The chalk escarpment that drops to the Thames, the wooded hillside, the open fields that rise toward the Downs — this is landscape that does not need embellishment, only respect. Our Passivhaus project The Deerings proved that certified energy performance and architectural character are not competing ambitions but complementary ones; a building can be extraordinarily efficient and entirely of its time. For sites beyond the conservation area, in the open landscape that frames Whitchurch-on-Thames, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework opens a door: architecturally excellent homes in countryside settings where the design genuinely enhances the landscape. It is a demanding threshold — one that rules out most new building in rural areas — but it is exactly where we want to work.
Whitchurch-on-Thames is a village shaped by its crossing point — the bridge, the river, the meeting of chalk hill and floodplain. If you are considering a project here, we would welcome the chance to talk about how your building can sit well within that conversation of landscape, material and time.