C O N T E X T 1 3 0 : J U LY 2 0 1 3 5 Obituary Anthony Swaine, architect and conservationist Anthony Wells Swaine, who has died at the age of 99 without ever really retiring from practice as an architect, was born in 1913. His background was artistic, his mother being an art teacher, and it was his step-grandfather, a priest in the Dutch Roman Catholic church, who introduced him to architecture, visiting churches and explaining the importance of liturgy for design.When illness took him out of school, he spent more time with his grandfather until joining the college of art in Margate. Showing a greater interest in architecture, he moved to the office of Harry H Stroud, an architect in general practice in Ramsgate. In 1931, after badgering Harold Anderson, the cathedral architect in Canterbury, he joined his office. He was 18. Anderson’s practice included work with historic buildings.While Swaine trained in the evenings, the work of the office gained him both knowledge of conservation and a facility with traditional design and detailing. His chance to move into practice on his own account, however, came as a result of the war, first as clerk of works at Canterbury Cathedral, then with much work carried out for theWar Damage Commission. His is the rebuilding of the chancel at All Saints church, Lydd, on the Romney Marsh (1958, following his conservation of the rest of the church, 1951–3). He also worked on repairs to St James, Bermondsey, where the spire had been shattered by vibrations. Meanwhile, on complaining to the then chief investigator in the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, S J Garton, that the list for Canterbury was lacking in terms of its coverage of medieval buildings, he found himself asked to assist Anthony Dale, later Garton’s successor, to revise that list in the light of his knowledge of the medieval city. He moved on to produce the first lists for Rochester, Chatham, Tenterden,Whitstable and Sandwich. Swaine is remembered in Canterbury for, among other things, having taken the photograph (following a night of fire-watching on the cathedral during the air raid of the night of 31 May, 1942) which showed the scale of the damage to the Whitefriars quarter of the city. In his eyes, the damage of the air raid was compounded by the actions of the town clerk and city engineer: ‘Many buildings, although damaged, were left standing and capable of repair; however, while the ashes and cinders were still warm, the evil act of matricide was about to begin.’ Swaine was there at the beginning of a debate about the form which new development should take which has swung back and forth in Canterbury ever since. His concern for historic buildings and areas led him in the 1960s to take over work in Faversham from David Nye on the restoration of buildings in the Market Place and in Abbey Street. This led in 1967 to work on Faversham Conserved, a report commissioned jointly by Faversham Borough Council and Kent County Council. His work on area conservation in Faversham was therefore contemporary with the comparable but much better known reports on Bath, Chester, Chichester andYork, commissioned by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government at the time of the 1967 Civic Amenities Act. He was a little later to produce a similar report on Margate Old Town, a place which also owes a considerable debt to him. Best known for his conservation work, he was also a capable architect in mid-20th century variations of traditional styles. He was among those who re-used buildings and bits of buildings. He re-used parts of the gatehouse from Forester’s Hall, Canterbury, as an addition while repairing the Wealden Hall in Ivy Lane, and his own house in Deal was also something of a palimpsest. He helped save St Edmund’s Chapel in Dover, and Eastbridge Hospital in Canterbury was under his wing for many years. His work was not restricted to the southeast of England; he lectured in Europe and advised on the restoration of the church of the Madonna dell’Orto in Venice after the 1966 floods. He was a trustee of Venice in Peril and also of the Ancient Monuments Society. Swaine’s last major new work was the new chapel at the priory in Minster-inThanet but he was still the inspecting architect at All Saints, Lydd at the time of his death. He will be remembered in Kent for his generosity as an architect, numbers of whom practised with him, and as a conservationist who influenced many in public and private practice. Anthony Swaine Architecture will continue to practise from the Bastion Tower, one of the surviving bastion towers, a remnant of the city walls of Canterbury. Richard Morrice The 13th century St Edmund’s Chapel, Dover, which Tony Swaine restored in the 1960s The chancel at Lydd, restored by Tony Swaine (Photos: Anthony Swaine Architecture)
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