Professor Andrew Saint (1946-2025)

The Society has learnt with great sadness of the death of long-time member and Honorary Patron, Professor Andrew Saint.

Professor Saint had a distinguished career as one of the most pre-eminent architectural historians of his generation. His scholarship was extensive and included studies of individual architects (his landmark study of Norman Shaw published in 1976), explorations of the nature of the profession (The Image of the Architect, 1983 and Architect and Engineer, 2007), his definitive study of the post-war schools building programme (Towards a Social Architecture, the role of school building in postwar England, 1987), many articles on 19th and 20th-century architecture for academic journals and a forthcoming book on the history of Waterloo Bridge. Saint worked as the architectural editor of the Survey of London (1974–86) and as a historian for Historic England (then known as English Heritage) from 1986 to 1995, before being appointed Professor in the Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge, a post he held until 2006. He assumed the general editorship of the Survey of London between 2006 and 2019, during which time volumes on Battersea and on the West End of London were produced. His last contribution to the SAHGB was to support the launch of the Mark Girouard Fund.  He and Girouard worked closely together as Victorian specialists, and he gave a characteristically witty and entertaining lecture on what he called ‘The Pubs Book’ at the first Girouard Symposium last autumn.   

The Society extends its condolences to his family.

Professor Andrew Saint (1946-2025)