Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Architect who saved city’s historic buildings
aclaridge@thekmgroup.co.uk ANTHONY Swaine, who has died aged 99, was a renowned Canterbury-based architect who continued to work until just days before his death.
He was a determined conservationist with a relentless quest to protect and enhance old buildings and who railed against the brutal post-war designs that came to blight many British cities, including Canterbury.
Born in the west country in 1913, he came to Canterbury in his late teens and began working for an architect with a leaning towards the ancient. It was a move which would shape the rest of Mr Swaine’s professional life.
Devastated
During the Second World War, Mr Swaine joined the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) and became an agent for the War Damage Commission. He famously climbed up the Bell Harry Tower of the Cathedral and took a photograph of the city burning during the Blitz.
After the war, Mr Swaine travelled to France and Belgium, inspecting places such as Caen and Rouen and learning about their approaches to restoring devastated city centres.
His visits to the Continent strengthened his resolve that a 1945 plan for the demolition and modernisation of central Canterbury would be an architectural disaster.
He battled to preserve damaged buildings in an age when there was pressure on local authorities to demolish them and replace them with convenient, modern structures.
Mr Swaine’s company Anthony Swaine Architecture was set up in 1945. It has most recently been based at The Bastion Tower – a 14th century section of the old city wall – in Pound Lane. The firm and its name continue after Mr Swaine’s death.
In due course, Mr Swaine became a founding member of the Canterbury Society and helped limit the scale of modernisation plans for the city.
He also salvaged architectural and historic fragments from buildings, making their way to museums or being incorporated in restoration projects.
His work includes restoring almshouses across Canterbury, the East Bridge Hospital, the 15th century hall in Ivy Lane, the medieval Anchor Inn in North Lane and the Poor Priest’s Hospital in Stour Street.
Outside the city, he was instrumental in conservation projects in the old towns of Faversham, Margate and Deal, where he lived.
His architectural instincts were vindicated when in the 1980s and 1990s, city planners across the UK began to tear down the post- war struc- tures and replace them with buildings more sympathetic to their surroundings and to what had stood there before.
He died on Friday after contracting pneumonia, but had turned up for his one day a week of work on Tuesday.
Away from work, Mr Swaine enjoyed cycling and was a consummate Fran- cophile. He was a member of the Cirque Francais, a French language group based in Canterbury.
Mr Swaine would have celebrated his 100th birthday on August 25.
He never married and does not have any children. A place and time for his funeral have yet to be arranged.