The Georgian Group Architectural Awards have included Beckford’s Tower and Gorhambury House among eight projects to win in scheme celebrating exemplary conservation of Georgian heritage.
The Georgian group writes:
The Awards, now in their 21st year, celebrate those who have demonstrated the vision and commitment to restore Georgian buildings and landscapes and to create new work in the spirit of the Georgian era across the United Kingdom. The winners were recognized in an awards ceremony on Tuesday 4 November 2025, at Inner Temple, Central London. The awards were presented by the Chair of Judges Dr John Goodall, Architectural Editor of Country Life. The awarded projects span the country from County Durham to Dorset and include an architectural folly, a Wren church, and the 21st century renaissance of one of England’s finest stately homes.
Writer and journalist Sir Simon Jenkins and Kate Bellamy, Director of the Clore Duffield Foundation, were this year’s guest judges. They joined Paul Zisman, Chair of the Georgian Group, architect Mark Hammond, Crispin Holborow of Savills, and Dr Anya Lucas, Director of The Georgian Group. Anya Lucas, Director of The Georgian Group, said: ‘The Georgian period gave us many of Britain’s most beautiful buildings; architecturally-speaking, the era introduced order, proportion and harmony inspired by classical antiquity and planned urban ensembles such as crescents, terraces and squares. It is a design tradition that is admired around the world. However, much of this architectural inheritance is in danger through insensitive development or neglect. Our Architectural Awards – now in their 21st year – provide such a positive and hopeful counterpoint to the threats to built heritage we at The Georgian Group see on a daily basis. The Awards also provide inspiration and encouragement to those embarking on restoration projects. It was a privilege to visit the shortlisted projects and our huge congratulations go to this year’s winners’.
John Goodall, Chair of Judges, said: ‘This year’s shortlisted projects were of unusually high quality and this made the judging process as challenging as it was enjoyable. It has been a great privilege to meet the figures behind these incredibly varied projects – the common theme is their absolute determination to get things right through painstaking research and the highest standards of craftsmanship, materials and design.’
Crispin Holborow of Savills Private Office and member of the judging panel said: ‘Georgian architecture is hugely valued by many of our clients. Its guiding principles work just as well for how we live today, and I have seen some wonderful examples during my past 20 years as a judge. It is an honour to return as sponsors of the Georgian Group Architectural Awards this year and to support the charity’s mission to protect and promote buildings and designed landscapes of the period.’
A new publication Craft, Conservation and Classicism, published today by The Georgian Group, celebrates the 21st anniversary of the Architectural Awards scheme.
The Winner of the Award for New Building in a Georgian Context is Hardwicke Court (William Smalley RIBA).
Hardwicke Court is a Grade II*-listed country house by Sir Robert Smirke, built 1818-20 for the Lloyd-Baker family (who continue to live there). The winning project covers the family and back of house areas of the house and the rear estate yard, all of which were tired and in degrees of disrepair. At the rear of the main house, two rooms were opened up to form family kitchen and eating rooms, with new architect-designed joinery. These open through existing openings extended to the ground into a new garden room extension at the side of the house. Built in local Bath stone ashlar, the extension takes its scale from the house and design cues from Smirke’s spare detailing. Full height glazing sits independently behind the stone façade, expressing layers of history. A long glazed rooflight slot stretches the length of the ceiling.
The Winner of the Award for Restoration of a Georgian Building in a Landscape is Beckford’s Tower (Thomas Ford and Partners & Bath Preservation Trust)
Leaking, inaccessible, with outdated interpretation and only one display case, prior to practical completion in March 2025, Beckford’s Tower was failing to reach its potential as a museum and had been added to Historic England’s At Risk Register. Through the sensitive yet ambitious ‘Our Tower’ project, the small Beckford’s Tower team not only restored the Tower, but also opened up the landscape, uncovered a hidden Grotto, restored a subterranean Vault, decolonialised the interpretation, and incorporated solar panels and air source heat pumps. Built 1826-27 for William Beckford (1760-1844) by architect Henry Edmund Goodridge (1797-1864), Beckford’s Tower (Grade I) was structurally secured during a project in 1997-2000 to ensure that the lantern at the top of the Tower remained stable. However, historic design faults meant that water continued to penetrate the lantern structure, failing windows made controlling the internal environment impossible, and only basic spaces and services were available to the museum. During 2023-2025 Bath Preservation Trust (BPT) set out to show how this complex building and its museum could be adapted with sensitivity, creativity and collaboration.
The Winner of the Award for Restoration of a Georgian Building in an Urban Setting is St Stephen Walbrook (Caroe Architecture & St Stephen Walbrook)
The current Grade I listed Church of St Stephen Walbrook was constructed after the Great Fire of London destroyed the earlier medieval church on the site. Designed by Christopher Wren, it is a masterpiece of his City Churches. The building is an ‘auditory church’ with a rectangular plan. Its interior is formed of sixteen Corinthian columns of equal height which support a cruciform barrel vault. Following the construction of an adjacent building in the 2010s, the Church Warden noted crack propagation to the external elevations, the western end of the nave, and internally in the tower. Following extensive monitoring and investigation, structural repairs and cosmetic remediation to areas of structural damage began in 2024 – along with other necessary repair and maintenance works, as identified in the Quinquennial Report, to make use of the scaffold access provision and the necessary closure period. These works have relied on the traditional skills and knowledge of the entire design team. In particular, the involvement of craftspeople skilled in traditional lime plaster and stonemasonry was crucial to realise the repairs sensitively.
The Winner of the Award for Restoration of a Georgian Country House is Gorhambury House (Inskip Gee Architects)
Gorhambury House (1777-84) designed by Sir Robert Taylor is a Grade II* listed Palladian villa, raised on a high basement storey and approached up a flight of steps. A product of the Grand Tour, it contains chimneypieces incorporating ‘antique’ panels acquired from Piranesi. The house also contains one of the most comprehensive collections of portraits dedicated to a single family extending from the fifteenth century to the present day. Gorhambury has been the home of the Grimston family since its construction but, after the Second World War, the main block was left largely dormant because of the lack of services. Viscount and Viscountess Grimston now live at Gorhambury with their young family.
The awarded project has resulted in the repair and conservation of the whole house and reuse of the main block as a vibrant home for this young family and its guests in the 21st century. A contemporary family kitchen has been moved into the Great Room at the heart of the house, the state rooms have been restored and made comfortable with modern services, new bathrooms have been introduced, and staff areas, the main kitchen, laundry, gun rooms and cellars entirely rethought. Two flats have been created in the wing. The house is once again the centre of a great estate and the local community. Throughout, the work has been led by Conservation Planning to ensure that the significance of the listed building was revealed and enhanced. Historic archives at the house and in the county record office were researched. Authenticity of design, materials and workmanship have been guiding principles in the refurbishment of Gorhambury.
The Winner of the Award for Restoration of a Georgian Interior is the Tapestry Drawing Room at Castle Howard (Francis Terry & Castle Howard Estate)
The new Tapestry Drawing Room at Castle Howard is a completely new architectural treatment to a room which was destroyed by fire in 1940. The room had been left as an empty shell of charred stonework ever since. The brief was to restore the room to what the architect of the house Sir John Vanbrugh (d. 1726) would have created and to incorporate the four Vanderbank tapestries which were designed and woven for the room in 1706. The architect Francis Terry worked in collaboration with interior designers Alec Cobbe and Remy Renzullo to realise this vision. The focus of the design is a baroque chimneypiece made from scagliola with an elaborate overmantel, framing a painting of the ‘Judgement of Paris’. A large entablature crowns the room with a decorative rinceau design in the frieze. The two doors have overdoor paintings depicting the life of Joseph.
Care has been taken to use traditional materials and techniques where possible. All architectural elements of the project were hand drawn by Francis Terry at full size. Unusually, the room uses onsite run plasterwork made in the traditional way, rather than fibrous plaster made off site which is conventionally used. The frieze of the fireplace has a head of Pluto framed by a cartouche which was carved by hand from limewood. The room is painted a dark blue to bring out the colours of the much-faded tapestries. In keeping with the baroque spirit, the decoration is extensively gilded. Everything in the room, apart from the antiques, paintings, and tapestries, was made in the UK within the past eighteen months. The crafts used for this room include hand-carved timber classical ornament, traditional run plasterwork, scagliola manufacture and gilding.
The Winner of the Award for Re-Use of a Georgian Building is the Rising and Gardens at Raby Castle (Donald Insall Associates & Raby Castle)
Raby Castle’s magnificent suite of 18th century equestrian buildings has been fully restored as part of a wider regeneration project. Over the last two years three beautiful but neglected buildings have been given a future. The Grade II* listed Coach House and Stables by John Carr of York, originally housing carriage horses, carriages and grooms’ accommodation, had latterly become cramped café, shop display accommodation. The Riding School had been neglected, used only to provide cover for events in inclement weather. Finally, the Grade II* listed Dutch barn, a hidden architectural gem, has been saved from dereliction after falling out of use for over a century.
All three buildings have been sympathetically renovated and repurposed by the Raby workforce supported by specialist consultants and contractors, to high standards, using appropriate materials from locally-sourced slate, to salvaged estate stonework. To achieve this, the Raby in-house team was expanded under the supervision of experienced heritage building specialists overseen by Donald Insall Associates. Full roof and fabric repairs, new flooring including underfloor heating (where appropriate) drawing from local ground sourced heat, careful interior design, and landscaping in the surrounding area using largely local reclaimed materials have created three public-facing spaces at the heart of a transformed visitor experience. Built for the Earls of Darlington, keen horsemen, hunters, race-horse breeders and trainers, these buildings have been placed into their historic context and can now be shared with visitors.
The Winner of the Diaphoros Prize is Poundbury (Phase III) (ADAM Architecture & Ben Pentreath Studio)
Designing a town in the spirit of the Georgian era – made up of numerous classically-inspired houses and public buildings – is inevitably far more complex than designing an individual building. It is perhaps the greatest challenge for traditional architects, and one which draws on all aspects of architectural and urban design expertise. The north-east and Northern Quadrants at Poundbury, which make up phase 3 of the development, were commissioned by the Duchy of Cornwall, within the masterplan by Leon Krier. This phase extends from Queen Mother Square at the heart of the development to the ancient Poundbury Hillfort. Phase 3 has been undertaken as a close collaboration between George Saumarez Smith of ADAM Architecture and Ben Pentreath of Ben Pentreath Studio working closely with the builders CG Fry, Morrish Homes, and Places For People. In contrast to the earlier Poundbury phases, the designers had complete control over the design which is reflected in a higher level of architectural detailing and quality, setting new standards for the scheme. Architectural details were drawn at a large scale by the design team and discussed in detail with the housebuilders during construction. One of the innovations in the later phases of the Poundbury masterplan is the inclusion of traditional Garden Squares.
The Winner of the Giles Worsley Award for Work in the Spirit of the Georgian Era is Newnham Paddox (Giles Quarme Architects)
Newnham Paddox is one of the oldest of English country seats. The estate remains the home of Alex and Susie Feilding, the Earl and Countess of Denbigh & Desmond, and their young family. A house was first constructed on the site in the sixteenth century. This building was likely timber-framed and later rebuilt in brick. It was replaced by a new house in 1768 designed by Capability Brown to sit within his landscaped parkland. The house was enlarged by Thomas Henry Wyatt and eventually demolished in 1952. A temporary house was erected on the site in 1982 but, by 2016, its replacement was urgent.
Following an architectural competition in 2017, Giles Quarme Architects (GQA) was selected to design a new house to a tight budget, suitable for modern living, but with enough traditional presence to sit within the context of an historic and established Capability Brown parkland. Julian Cripps, senior designer at GQA, was responsible for the design of the new house which is far more compact than its historic predecessors (seven bays to Brown’s eleven) and sits in front of the old foundations for archaeological reasons. Thanks to its respectful scale and allusive architecture, the new house fills the void created by the loss of the 19th century house while responding sensitively to setting. The main front and living rooms all face south, on axis with a set of ornate eighteenth-century Tijou-inspired iron gates made by Davies Brothers of Wrexham and with views over Capability Brown’s parkland. The principal elevation echoes Brown’s house and has two flanking slate-capped Palladian towers topped by large copper finials. The north front is enlivened by a recessed centre and a Roman Doric porch. A key feature of the architecture is the accurate, understated Classical detail. All the ground-floor rooms are paved with limestone for practicality. Underfloor heating derived from the new ground-source system and comprehensive insulation make the scheme highly thermally-efficient; combining traditional design with climate change adaptation.
