Our father, John Smith, who has died aged 94, served during the second world war in the Royal Engineers and was later a teacher and accomplished architectural historian.
He was born in Birmingham, the son of Thomas, a clerk at the Co-op, and his wife, Gertrude (nee Walker). From an early age, John was a railway enthusiast and as soon as he could, he travelled around Britain to collect engine numbers. Educated at Camp Hill grammar school, he went on to Birmingham University to study English and history. After starting his degree, he was called up in 1942, taking part in the Normandy landings from D-Day+1 and serving in Europe until 1946, finishing as a teacher for the Army College of the Rhine.
Returning to Birmingham, he completed his degree, then studied for a master’s in history, researching 17th-century Shrewsbury. Later, he worked on threatened buildings, and wrote the Royal Commission on Historic Monuments volume on Breconshire, which was pioneering in looking at a selection of all types of dwelling, not predominantly country houses.
He was invited to take charge of the commission’s York office but declined as his wife, Heather (nee Boese, whom he had married in 1955), had an established career in social work in Hertfordshire. Nevertheless he became its senior investigator and architectural adviser to the commission’s secretary. He also ran courses on the study of medieval architecture in Wales and formed the Essex Architectural Research Society.
On his retirement in 1987, he received a grant from the Wilson Centre, Washington DC, to continue earlier research on Roman villas. He made frequent visits to the Römisch-Germanische Kommission, Frankfurt, a division of the German Archaeological Institute, and wrote Roman Villas: A Study in Social Structure (1997).
Spending their retirement in St Albans, he and Heather formed a medieval studies group under the aegis of St Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society to produce a book, St Albans 1650-1700: A Thoroughfare Town and its People (2003), offering an insight into social change in a typical English community.
John was interested in social change and the transmission of ideas across Europe and how this was illustrated in building design. An able linguist with a European outlook, he made many friends across the continent and built up a vast library with books in many languages. He was a warm, brilliant man who was interested in people and society: intolerant of prejudice and narrow minded attitudes.
Heather died in March. He is survived by us, his three sons, and by four grandsons and a great-grandson.
