The church of St Mary the Virgin in Woodford is known locally as the Cathedral of the Nene, and the name is not entirely a joke. This is a Grade I listed building — a classification reserved for structures of exceptional interest — and its scale and ambition far exceed what you would expect from a village on the River Nene east of Thrapston. Begun in the mid-twelfth century with additions through the thirteenth and fourteenth, its west tower was complete by around 1400, and inside are fourteenth-century oak effigies of a knight and his lady, carved with a detail and delicacy that belongs in a cathedral chapter house. During restoration work in 1867, a mummified human heart wrapped in coarse cloth was discovered in a niche cut into one of the pillars — a medieval relic whose origin has never been fully explained. What fascinates me as an architect is not just the quality of the building but the ambition behind it: a village that built something of cathedral aspiration, using the limestone and ironstone of its own ground, and made it last.
Award-winning Architects in Woodford
Heritage Rigour, Environmental Ambition
A village with a Grade I listed church and a building stock spanning eight centuries needs an architect who understands historic fabric on its own terms. My training with SPAB — the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings — taught me to read how old buildings work before deciding how to intervene, and that principle runs through every project our practice takes on. I founded Gresford Architects in London in 2006, and we now work from Oxford with clients across the country. I am an ARB-registered and RIBA Chartered architect, a member of the Passivhaus Trust and The Green Register. The Deerings, a certified Passivhaus home in Hertfordshire, won the RIBA East Award in 2018, the year I was also a finalist for Sustainability Architect of the Year at the Building Design Awards. In 2025 I was invited to judge the British Homes Awards. Our projects have been published in Dezeen, Grand Designs Magazine and The Modern House Journal. In Woodford, where the same limestone and ironstone that built the Cathedral of the Nene runs through the cottages, farmhouses and boundary walls of the village, that depth of experience is what the work demands.
Architectural Services on the River Nene
Renovations in Woodford engage with a building stock of real depth. The church aside, the Manor House — though largely sixteenth century — retains buttresses and a doorway from the thirteenth or early fourteenth century, evidence that its foundations are medieval. The Round House, dated 1815, was built to commemorate the Battle of Waterloo. The older cottages along Church Street and the lanes around it are constructed from the same coursed limestone and ironstone as the church, often with Collyweston stone-slate roofs. North Northamptonshire Council handles planning for the parish. Through my membership of SPAB, I approach these limestone and ironstone buildings with the understanding that solid stone walls manage moisture through their mass and their permeable lime mortar — and that any renovation must respect that behaviour, using materials compatible with the existing fabric rather than sealing it.
Extension Design for homes in Woodford should respond to the character of one of the Nene valley's most architecturally distinguished villages. The limestone and ironstone palette is consistent and strong, and any extension must sit within it — matching the proportions, the roofline, the window details of the existing building. The river setting adds a further consideration: properties near the Nene have a relationship with the waterside landscape that an extension should acknowledge rather than ignore. Whether the brief is a ground-floor extension that opens the house to the garden, a garden room overlooking the valley, or additional space above, the design should make the whole building feel more resolved.
EnerPHit, the Passivhaus Institute's certified retrofit standard, is well suited to the range of housing in Woodford. The solid-walled stone cottages present the classic challenge: thick walls with no insulation, draughty junctions, and a building envelope that predates any notion of thermal efficiency. Vapour-open insulation, careful airtightness detailing, and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery can transform these homes — warmer, quieter, dramatically cheaper to run — while the stone facades continue to weather as they always have. For the later housing in the village, the gains from a full EnerPHit retrofit can be more straightforward still.
Sustainable Design connects every project we take on, and in Woodford it resonates with a village whose greatest building has endured because it was made with ambition and skill from local materials. That is sustainable architecture at its most fundamental — building well enough that the question of replacement does not arise for centuries. PassivHaus Design sets our benchmark for new construction, delivering certified comfort with minimal energy demand. New Build Design in Woodford must respect the limestone and ironstone character that gives the village its coherence. For sites in the Nene valley countryside around the parish, Paragraph 84 of the National Planning Policy Framework provides a route to architecturally outstanding homes — but the design must be worthy of a landscape that already contains one of the finest medieval parish churches in the county.
Woodford built itself a cathedral. If you are considering a project in a village of that ambition, we would welcome the conversation.