The name Winnersh comes from Old English — winn and ersc — meaning something close to "water meadow and cultivated field." It is the kind of name that describes a landscape shaped by use, and that has not changed. What strikes me about Winnersh is the sheer range of what has been built here over the centuries. At Bearwood, Robert Kerr designed one of the great Victorian country houses for John Walter III of The Times, a mansion in Jacobean Revival red brick where every one of the four and a half million bricks was fired in kilns on the estate itself. A short walk away, J.H. Good's Church of St Catherine stands in Bath stone ashlar, built in 1846 by John Walter II in memory of his daughter. And then there is the rest of the village — the interwar ribbon development along the A329, the post-war estates, the quiet residential streets that house the families who live and work in this part of Berkshire today. Winnersh has always been cultivated ground, and the question for an architect working here is how to bring the same care to the modest homes that make up most of the village as went into the extraordinary ones.
Award-winning Architects in Winnersh
Why Clients Across Berkshire Trust Gresford Architects
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, the Passivhaus Trust, and The Green Register — which reflects how central sustainability and heritage sensitivity are to the way we practise. Our RIBA East Award for The Deerings recognised a Passivhaus home designed to be comfortable, durable, and efficient from the ground up. I was shortlisted for the RIBA South Award for The Old Water Tower, named 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. Our work has been featured in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine, The Modern House Journal, and the RIBA Journal. We bring the same commitment to every project, whether it is a rear extension in a suburban village or a ground-up Passivhaus in open countryside.
Architectural Services for Homes in Winnersh
Extension Design is often the starting point for families in Winnersh. Much of the village's housing dates from the 1920s through the 1970s — the ribbon-built homes along the main road, the post-war estates that filled in the gaps — and these houses were designed for a different way of living. A family in one of these homes may need a kitchen that opens properly to the garden, a downstairs room that works as a home office, or simply more space than the original plan ever allowed. Wokingham Borough Council handles planning for the parish, and we work closely with their requirements to design extensions that feel like a natural continuation of the existing building rather than something bolted on as an afterthought. The materials matter too: where a home sits near the older parts of the village, close to the Walter family's legacy at Sindlesham and Bearwood, the choice of brick, the pitch of a roof, the proportion of a window all contribute to whether the new work reads as considered or careless.
EnerPHit is our certified retrofit standard, and it is particularly relevant to the interwar and immediate post-war homes that form the backbone of Winnersh. These houses — solid-walled, single-glazed, often with uninsulated floors and lofts — lose heat steadily through their fabric. A piecemeal approach, adding cavity insulation here and draught-proofing there, rarely addresses the underlying problem. EnerPHit works as a complete system: continuous insulation appropriate to the wall construction, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, and careful airtightness detailing at every junction. The result is a home that is warmer, quieter, and dramatically cheaper to heat. Robert Kerr understood something about building to last when he specified those estate-fired bricks for Bearwood House; an EnerPHit retrofit applies the same principle of thoroughness to the homes that most people in Winnersh actually live in.
Sustainable Design is the thread that runs through everything we do, and in a village that sits within the commuter corridor between Reading and Wokingham, it carries practical weight. Homes in Winnersh that perform well — that are comfortable to inhabit, economical to run, and built to last — are homes designed with energy and materials efficiency from the start. PassivHaus Design is our benchmark for new-build performance, delivering homes that need almost no conventional heating. New Build Design in Winnersh requires careful attention to context, particularly where development sites sit alongside the existing suburban fabric or the more rural edges of the parish toward Sindlesham. Renovations for the older properties in the village draw on our experience with heritage and fabric-first thinking, understanding what was built and how to improve it without losing what works. And for the open land beyond the village boundary, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route to exceptional rural architecture — a route we have navigated successfully for clients elsewhere and would welcome the opportunity to explore here.
Winnersh is a village that has been shaped and reshaped over centuries — from the water meadows that gave it its name, through the Walter family's extraordinary estate, to the suburban homes where most of its families live today. If you are considering a project here, whether extending, retrofitting, or building something new in this part of Berkshire, we would be glad to talk about what good architecture can do for your home.