Maidenhead Architects

Maidenhead is a modern town with a small village feel, made up of quiet cul-de-sacs with ample brick houses and postwar semis clustered around festive pubs and outstanding schools. It serves as the practical, liveable, amenity-rich centre between Windsor and weekend idylls like Cliveden House, the manor-house resort and spa.

You’ll find all sorts here, from lovers of mid-century developments, with their mod cons and garden conservatories, to Grand Designs devotees, who clear the way for giant estates that could sleep 20. In between are families who want more space than they could find in London, at a reasonable price with room for improvement. Most people open up existing houses with an open-plan kitchen lined with Crittall, a great room, nanny suite, children’s wing or a summerhouse. These people adore the bucolic setting and the weekend vibe yet yearn for extra space to spread out or entertain.

Out here, you’ll likely be able to find an affordable house that doesn’t require complicated strategies to achieve planning permission when you want to alter it. Maidenhead architects who have experience dealing with the local authorities and grounding in period architecture can transform a house with a past into a house with a long and happy future. There are few technical problems a skilled architect can’t solve with creative thinking and a good contractor, so it makes sense to think big. The good-sized gardens have real potential too.

A wonderful world of green exists beyond the private gardens. There’s a reason the Queen lives in the so-called Royal Borough of Berkshire, just a few minutes downriver. Her rambling weekend pad – built in the 11^th century for William the Conqueror no less – oversees and overlooks some of the prettiest green vistas among England’s affluent Southeast. From the Thames River valley, along its long lateral border, to the North Wessex Downs, monopolising the west, Berkshire is long on natural beauty.

The county boasts architectural splendour in spades, too. Windsor Castle, itself a hodgepodge of styles introduced over centuries, has informed the surrounding areas for all of its existence. Eton College, just across the river, came along in the 15^th century to educate the country’s elite and spawned an entire village of handsome residential streets. The Palladian sprawl of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, near the Hampshire border, followed three centuries later and taught Princes William and Harry. The Ascot Racecourse was founded in 1711, putting its quiet town of red-brick Gothic churches and modest stone cottages on the map. Once you’ve cleared Highclere, Berkshire turns up big skies, family farms, village greens with ancient stone churches and fields of bouncy alpaca.