30 June. It is with great sorrow that ICCROM has learned of the death of a long-time collaborator and friend, Derek Linstrum.  He was 84 years old. 

Derek Linstrum, an architect and architectural historian, was born and educated in West Yorkshire. He held appointment in West Riding County Architect’s office in the period following the Second World War. In 1966 he decided to move to the academic field, and was appointed Senior Lecturer at Leeds School of Architecture (1966-71), where he received his Ph.D, in 1970, Sir Jeffry Wyatville, Architect to the King (Clarendon, Oxford 1972). In 1971, he was invited to become Radcliffe Lecturer at the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, University of York, where he set up the post-graduate course, later Master Course, in Architectural Conservation.

It is in this position that he first contacted ICCROM (then International Centre for Conservation) in 1972. Following this early encounter, an agreement of collaboration was signed between ICCROM and the University of York, resulting in an exchange of lecturers, as well as offering ICCROM ARC course participants the opportunity to continue for a Master degree. At ICCROM’s courses, Derek lectured for over two decades on the history and principles of the British conservation policies of historic buildings, as well as on the conservation of historic gardens. He was a much appreciated and influential teacher.

In his two-storey garden house in a Leeds suburb, Derek had an impressive library in architectural history, as well as valuable collections of original architectural drawings, architectural medals (now in the RIBA Library), eighteenth-century furniture and Persian rugs.

The York course soon received international recognition, and as its director, Derek Linstrum was regularly invited abroad to lecture and to act as a consultant, including trips to several African countries, Iran, Turkey, and India, as well as to European countries and North America, often for the British Council. After his retirement from York, he was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, as well as Hoffman Wood Professor at the University of Leeds. He was also a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in London, the chairman of the Advisory Committee of York Minster, the founder of the Leeds Civic Trust, and chairman of the Yorkshire Committee for the European Architectural Heritage Year 1975.

Linstrum’s publications include 'Wyatt family' in the Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects (1974), West Yorkshire Architects and Architecture (1978) and Towers and Colonnades: the Architecture of Cuthbert Brodrick (1988), as well as numerous contributions to publications such as Sir Banister Fletcher's History of Architecture (19th edition 1987, 20th edition 1996), Concerning Buildings (1996), Encyclopaedia of Interior Design (1997), and The Victoria Memorial Hall, Calcutta (1977). He was editor of the ICOMOS journal Monumentum, published by Butterworths from 1982 to 1985, as well as one of the joint editors of the Butterworth-Heinemann Conservation and Museology series. As architectural correspondent, he wrote regularly to the Yorkshire Post, as well as contributing to many journals in Britain and abroad.

The Director General and all the staff of ICCROM would like to present their most sincere condolences to the family of Dr Derek Linstrum and to his colleagues at the Universities of York and Leeds and those who knew him around the world.

updated on: 13 August, 2009