Heritage Architect in Hertfordshire

SOANE Architects is based in Wadesmill, Hertfordshire, and the county is where the practice does the largest share of its continuing, hands-on work. Hertfordshire's listed building stock is dominated by its market towns — Hertford, Ware, St Albans, Berkhamsted — and by the country estates and farmhouses in the land between them. Timber-framed construction under render or weatherboarding is common in the older vernacular buildings; Georgian and early Victorian brick fronts, often added to earlier timber structures, are just as characteristic of the market towns themselves.

Listed building consent in the county is decided by its district and borough councils — East Hertfordshire District Council and Broxbourne Borough Council between them cover the practice's two published Hertfordshire case studies — each maintaining its own conservation area appraisals and, for the historic town centres, detailed local guidance on shopfronts, materials and signage as well as on the listed buildings themselves.

Sacombe House, a Grade II* country house near Hertford, is the practice's longest-running Hertfordshire commission: masonry repair, roof design and a phased programme of consented alterations, with Giles Paul Shorter involved since 2018. Bluecoats House in Hertford — a Grade II schoolmaster's house read through three centuries of alteration — shows the other end of the scale: a heritage statement, Level 3 building record and significance mapping that supported listed building consent to bring the building back into use.

Between them, the two projects cover the range of work a Hertfordshire listed building typically needs: a continuing estate programme of repair and adaptation at one end, and a one-off consent supported by careful research and recording at the other. Both start the same way — with an appraisal that sets out what the building is, what protects it, and what any proposed works would actually need before a single drawing is made.

Being based in the county rather than simply working in it matters in practical terms: site visits are straightforward to arrange at short notice, and the practice has direct, ongoing familiarity with East Hertfordshire's and Broxbourne's own conservation area guidance, rather than researching a new authority's expectations from scratch for each instruction. For a Hertfordshire owner, that usually means a faster first conversation and a shorter path from enquiry to appraisal.

The county's proximity to London also means many Hertfordshire instructions come from owners who work in the capital but live, or are considering buying, in a market town or on an estate outside it — bringing London-scale expectations of pace and communication to a project that still has to move at the speed a conservation officer, an archive search or a specialist contractor sets. Managing that difference honestly, rather than promising a timeline the consent process cannot support, is part of how the practice works here.

• East Hertfordshire District Council ↗
• Broxbourne Borough Council ↗
• Historic England ↗

• Sacombe House — Grade II* · Hertfordshire
  Grade II* country house near Hertford — a continuing programme since 2018.
• Bluecoats House, Hertford — Grade II · Hertford
  Grade II schoolmaster's house — heritage statement, record and significance mapping.

• Cintra House, Cambridge
  Just outside Hertfordshire, in Cambridge — shown here as nearby work (GATE G5: no separate Cambridgeshire region page yet).
• Poplar Manor, Cambridge Green Belt
  Also nearby, in the Cambridge Green Belt.

Read a real worked example first: see a sample appraisal, or browse every area SOANE works in.