Wellspring:
1. The head or source of a spring, stream or river
2. The place something comes from or starts at
We design beautiful, healthy, cement-free buildings made almost entirely from natural and recycled materials and built to last. We have a strong specialism in designing straw insulated buildings using loadbearing, infill or hybrid strawbale walls, and prefabricated straw-insulated panels.
It can be difficult to put into words how it can feel to be inside a building made from natural materials, but we understand the big impact it can make to our lives to inhabit beautiful, healthy environments.
Our Vision
A built environment that is designed for the wellbeing of all people and our planet.
Our Mission
To always be pioneering high-performance, contemporary, accessible, natural building design.
Our Committment
We are committed to designing buildings with zero use of cement
Our Core Values
Care
We ‘get it.’ We care about your project and understand why it is so important and work with this in mind.
Rigour
We are rigorous in our pursuit of natural building design excellence.
Embodiment
We want to embody the principles of our designs in the way we work and how we live our lives.
Accessibility
We aim to make our designs and buildings inclusive and accessible so that as many people as possible can inhabit healthy environments.
Collaboration
We work with you, to create a project that meets your needs. We love to collaborate with others to enrich the work we do.
Practicality
We offer practical, simple design solutions that can suit lower budgets and hands-on self builders.
Who We Are
Matt Bailey
Matt is an Architect with a passion and commitment to natural, healthy architectural design. He has designed a number of strawbale and prefabricated straw panel buildings, and been involved in residential, public and commercial projects. He has experience in community housing, working with existing buildings, and educational and arts projects within other practices throughout his career.
He originally met Barbara attending training courses with the School of Natural Building, during his architectural education. He joined the practice, under our previous name ‘Straw Works,’ in 2018, and became a Director in 2019.
He has been passionate about low impact living, health and wellbeing since before his training in architecture. As such, during his degree at the University of Cambridge he found himself interested particularly in natural materials and passive design principles. He appreciates the importance of craft, making and building in the design process, and has always pursued opportunities to learn practical natural building skills alongside his design work.
His postgraduate studies at the Centre for Alternative Technology, and his numerous practical building courses and trainings in strawbale and other natural building methods have given Matt a deeper understanding of how to design natural, healthy buildings.
He is a registered Architect with the ARB.
Barbara Jones
Barbara realised early on that she loved practical work but was hampered by having no role models, and no opportunities for training, being a woman.
She trained as a carpenter and joiner, and specialised in roofing because she loved it the most and she founded ‘Amazon Nails,’ a women’s roofing company, in 1989. In 1994, Barbara discovered strawbale building and knew she had found her true path. Barbara truly believes she had found a way for ordinary people to get involved in building again, through simple techniques and affordable methods.
In 2007 the business became a social enterprise called amazonails ltd. In this manifestation they achieved a lot, including the design of affordable strawbale council houses and the largest loadbearing straw building in the UK.
Barbara then went on to found ‘Straw Works,’ which gave Barbara the opportunity to continue designing great houses and buildings, work on roofs and teach on real buildings.
In 2014, Barbara started the ‘School of Natural Building,’ a separate company that would offer the training and courses side of Barbara’s work.
Barbara has lost count of how many strawbale buildings she has worked on, but it has to be over 300 by now!
Straw Works
Wellspring Architecture previously traded under the name Straw Works Ltd. Straw Works was founded by Barbara Jones (formerly of Amazon Nails), initially offering design, construction and education and later focusing solely on Architectural design. Barbara and the Straw works team designed many residential and non-residential buildings using straw bales and natural materials from tiny garden buildings to the UK’s largest straw bale building to date.