My pal and former colleague Ian Leith, who has died aged 75, was a long-serving acquisitions officer with the Historic England Archive. Ian’s data of the archive’s collections, lots of which he was accountable for buying over a profession spanning 47 years, was distinctive.
Researchers fascinated by unearthing little-known treasures in uncatalogued collections knew to contact Ian, who had extraordinary powers of recall. He’s acknowledged in lots of books produced during the last 40 years, together with quite a few volumes in The Buildings of England’s Pevsner Architectural Guides collection and Historic England’s personal publications.
Born in Belfast, Ian was the eldest of the 5 kids of Nan (nee McClure), a instructor, and Desmond Leith, a GP working in Northern Eire through the early years of the NHS. Later Desmond moved right into a analysis and improvement position for the pharmaceutical firm Pfizer, a job that took him and the household to Switzerland, Kenya, Belgium and Canada.
Ian obtained a BA in historical past and English literature at Trent College, Ontario, earlier than returning to the UK. In 1973 he began work with the Nationwide Buildings Document. Established as an unbiased physique in London in 1941, the NBR collected data of buildings and websites liable to harm throughout and after the second world warfare. In 1963 it turned a part of the Royal Fee on the Historic Monuments of England (RCHME), a listing of historical and historic monuments in England, and each merged with English Heritage in 1999, with the archive changing into a part of Historic England in 2015. Of nationwide significance, the archive now has over 12 million gadgets and a variety of main collections masking archaeology, structure and native historical past.
Ian relocated to Wiltshire in 1994 following the switch of the archive to Swindon. There he continued his work researching potential photographic acquisitions to plug gaps within the organisation’s collections. Amongst many treasures he was instrumental in buying had been a collection of PH Delamotte prints, about which he wrote the e-book Delamotte’s Crystal Palace (2005). His workplace overflowed with reference books and archive gadgets and was the scene of many lengthy, animated conversations about buildings and pictures till his retirement in 2020.
Professionally, Ian will probably be remembered as an advocate for the contribution of historic images to the examine of buildings and locations. He additionally maintained a lifelong curiosity in public sculpture and was a founding trustee of the Public Monuments and Sculpture Affiliation (PMSA), established in 1991 to marketing campaign for the safety and recording of sculpture in public locations. He was a member of the editorial board of the Sculpture Journal and instrumental in establishing the PMSA’s landmark Nationwide Recording undertaking.
Ian was a personal particular person, a superb cook dinner and epicurean. After a number of years of more and more debilitating ailing well being, he died of blood most cancers.
He’s survived by his spouse Tesni Daniel, whom he met in London in 1988 and married in 1996, and by his siblings, Linda, Brian, Sheelagh and Mandy.
