Robert Hurd

Sir Robert Philip Andrew Hurd (29 July 1905 – 17 September 1963) was an influential conservation architect. His original aim was to be an architectural author specialising in traditional forms. He came to Scotland in 1930 and worked at the Edinburgh College of Art for two years as assistant to the architect and planner Frank Mears. He was an early and highly respected conservation architect and wrote and broadcast on Scottish architecture, planning and reconstruction.

Hurd was of Anglo-Scottish parentage, the son of Sir Percy Angler Hurd MP and Hannah Swan Cox. He suffered from polio in early life and walked his whole life with a limp. He was educated at Marlborough College and then the LCC Central School of Arts. Thereafter he studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge becoming a close friend of Raymond McGrath and Mansfield Forbes. He came to Scotland in 1930 and completed his architectural studies at Edinburgh College of Art. As a student he lived in a house at 49 George Square. While working with Frank Mears, he met his mother's former tutor, the pioneering biologist and planner, Patrick Geddes, who was to be an abiding influence on his work.

He was an early member of the National Trust for Scotland and author of one of its first major publications, Scotland Under Trust (1938). In the same year he began campaigning to save historic buildings, his first coup being to temporarily rescue Tailors Hall on the Cowgate from demolition.

As an ironic twist, although Hurd was declared unfit for overseas service he served as an officer in the Royal Engineers (1940–46) and was put in charge of removing Edinburgh’s cast-iron railings for the war effort. During this time he also became president of the Saltire Society, a role he continued until 1948. He also served on the Councils of the Edinburgh Architectural Association and the Edinburgh Film Guild. Politically, he was a Scottish nationalist.

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