The Man Who Makes Houses Human

The architect looks back on six decades of friendship with some of our most treasured buildings

- Clive Aslet

BUILDINGS are so very much like people,’ says Sir Donald Insall. ‘They all have their own characters, their own strengths and weaknesses, their own message, their own background in terms of the influences that have made them. People change throughout their lives—so does a building.’

Born in 1926, Sir Donald began his career when conservation was regarded as ‘a bit odd—not part of everyday planning’. After architectural training at Bristol and a scholarship to the Royal Academy School, he won the Lethaby Scholarship from the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. That fired his imagination, but, in the late 1950s, an interest in old houses seemed antiquarian. ‘Nice to meet you, but when will your father be coming?’ asked the builder on one early job.

After working for Claud Phillimore, much occupied with the reduction of large country houses to fit the diminished scale of post- Second World War life, Sir Donald launched his own office in 1958, from his flat in Lyall Street, SW1. His father and then his wife, Libby, a lawyer, did the accounts.

It was a far cry from his practice today, in which he has 100- plus colleagues—‘a lovely bunch of folk, all so capable and so busy’ —across several offices in London and choice provincial towns. The spirit, however, stays the same: that of a family, united by a common purpose and enthusiasm.

‘Our first big job,’ Sir Donald recalls, ‘was a report on Kedleston Hall. I used to take a scooter on the train, hop off at Derby and go to the hall, where I was met by the butler and the dogs. Once or twice, [owner] Lord Scarsdale came on the back of the scooter for a ride around the estate.’