NEWSROUND
OBITUARIES
John Gifford, MBE (1946-2013)
ne of the greatest and
potentially most enduring
contributions to the world of
Scottish architectural history in recent
decades is that of John Gifford, who
died on 13th June 2013.
In late 1972 John, or ‘Johnnie’, was
invited to consider moving to
Edinburgh to work on the thenfledgling Buildings of Scotland project –
an extension of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner’s
county architectural guide series, The
Buildings of England. The idea of a
Scottish series was first raised with
Pevsner by Andor Gomme in 1958,
but it was not until the late 1960s that
the idea developed into a reality. By
1973, Colin McWilliam, alongside
David Walker who had been in
correspondence with Pevsner as far
back as 1964, was formulating a
programme of research and authorship to cover the entire
country. A small, select and close-knit team was gathered
to begin the task, with detailed research at the core of
their activity. The inaugural Scottish volume, Lothian (except
Edinburgh), by Colin McWilliam (1978), was in hand, but
the need for a professional researcher was recognised and
this was where John’s talent was invaluable.
From 1973 onwards John became a paid authorresearcher, initially supported by the National Trust for
Scotland. At this crucial early stage, and for some time
after, the Trust provided much-needed support. John’s dual
role as the Buildings of Scotland lead-researcher and writer
was one he continued for the remainder of his life. It was
through these years of assiduous, rigorous, and at times
thankless research, that the Buildings of Scotland series
derived their well-earned reputation as the greatest single
reference source on Scottish architectural history. John
provided the Scottish series with the modern standards
necessary for this status, at first by scanning publications for
Scottish references before moving towards archival
research. In the process, he produced countless pages of
new-found data, all set out in his distinctive and beautifully
lucid handwriting. Today, these notes are mostly deposited
in the National Monuments Record of Scotland, where
they remain together as a unified national collection, and
they are freely available for researchers, as John would have
strongly wished.
Inevitably, the rate of progress on The Buildings of
Scotland slowed down a little when, in 1976, John was
appointed Investigator of Historic Buildings within the
Historic Buildings Branch of the Scottish Development
Department, the predecessor of Historic Scotland. The
Principal Inspector in those years was David Walker. Again,
there was an acknowledged need to achieve higher
academic standards within the government body
responsible for listing buildings. After all, the process had
the potential to affect people’s property, the legislation was
O
still relatively new, and the first attempt
at producing nationwide coverage of lists
using a team of fast-moving enthusiasts
had produced results of mixed quality. By
1978, there was an emphasis upon
professionalism and academic
enhancement, and John stepped forward
to produce a revised list for Inverness,
work that immediately established a new
norm for listing standards within the
organisation. For the Inverness work he
based himself in the area, combining
both archival and field work, and
establishing himself in the process as the
foremost authority on the architectural
history of the Highlands. In 1981 he
produced a paper on the Inverness
architects for the then Scottish Georgian
Society, now the AHSS, to share the
results of his research more widely. This
was the first in a long series of major
publications authored by him.
In 1980, John left the Historic Buildings Branch and
became Head of Research at the newly founded Buildings
of Scotland Research Unit then based at Edinburgh
College of Art. Then followed the books - John’s main
contribution to scholarship. First came The Buildings of
Scotland: Edinburgh (1984; with Colin McWilliam and David
Walker), followed by Fife (1988), Highland & Islands (1992),
and Dumfries & Galloway (1996). The first volume published
by Yale University Press was Stirling & Central (2002, with
Frank Walker), Perth & Kinross (2007), and finally Dundee &
Angus (2012). A fruitful working partnership was formed
between John and series editor Charles O’Brien at Yale
University Press. With publications from other notable
Buildings of Scotland authors (sometimes aided by John), a
near-nationwide coverage for the series was within view
when John was diagnosed with an untreatable cancer. He
was on track to complete the volume covering Lanarkshire
and Renfrewshire with Frank Walker, and had already
undertaken much work for the revision of Lothian.
Discussions are now under way as to how to finish these.
Throughout the history of the Buildings of Scotland
project, progress was hampered by practical challenges.
Government grants were reduced to zero, and the
Buildings of Scotland Trust, established in 1991 with the
intention to support research and fund the completion of
the series, was wound up in 2011 before the vision had
been realised. There were frequent problems over office
accommodation and other resources, and subsequent to
the winding-up of the Trust, the project moved into John’s
home where he continued to work on his dual role as
researcher and author, disregarding these relatively
mundane obstacles in his single-m