Yes, in most of Purton you can, provided the house isn't one of the old ones. Most homes carry no heritage listing at all. One conservation area covers the historic core. The clay underneath moves more than the planners do. Extending here is mainly an engineering job, and a question of which street you're on.
Purton has 52 listed buildings: one grade I, one grade II* and 50 grade II. Listing covers the whole building, inside and out, so on those 52 even a new internal doorway or a different window needs listed building consent before anyone picks up a tool. Grade II is the everyday tier, but it isn't a formality. Changing a listed building without consent is a criminal offence, not a planning technicality, and the liability passes to whoever owns it, so check before you buy.
There's one conservation area, named Purton, covering the historic heart of the village. Inside it, the council takes a closer interest in how anything looks from the street. Automatic permitted development rights are narrower there, demolition needs consent, and work on trees needs notice. Outside the boundary, a post-war semi or a bungalow on a newer road is largely a normal house with normal rules.
Two scheduled monuments sit within the wider area, and they carry the strictest protection in the system. They only matter to a homeowner whose land runs up against one.
People here extend all the time, despite the old stone. The planning record shows 400 applications between April 2024 and June 2026, and 191 in the last twelve months. That's the village's standard reply to a growing family, and it looks more affordable than moving. Volume tells you appetite, not success, so read the neighbouring decisions on the council's portal before assuming yours will go the same way.
The bigger constraint is underground. The British Geological Survey puts all of Purton's postcodes in shrink-swell class 3, meaning clay that swells when wet and shrinks when dry. That isn't a reason to panic. It's a reason to take the foundations seriously. Extensions on this kind of ground often need deeper footings than a standard design allows for, especially near trees, and a structural engineer's view belongs in the budget before the kitchen brochure does. Nobody wants a crack where the new extension meets the old house to be their first lesson in geology.
In practice, an ordinary house outside the conservation area can often take a modest rear extension or loft conversion under permitted development, subject to size limits and a lawful development certificate if you want certainty. A listed building needs consent for almost anything. A house inside the conservation area needs a closer look at which rights still apply. Either way, check the exact address with Wiltshire Council's planning team before you commit, because the answer can differ between two houses on the same road.
Purton gives you a middling amount of freedom to change your home. Most houses can be extended with the usual paperwork, while the historic core and the clay under everything add a layer of care that the estate agent won't mention.