Alan Mackenzie Rome

Elected 1 March 1979

This was first published in the Times on 22 January 2011

From an early age Alan Rome had a passion for buildings, especially medieval churches. As a teenager he avidly visited churches and compiled scrapbooks of press cuttings and notes, setting him on course for a lifetime’s devotion to the care of ecclesiastical buildings.

He was born in Bristol on 24 October 1930 and died there on Christmas Eve 2010, after a brief illness, at the age of eighty. Rome, whose father was a structural engineer, was educated at The King’s School, Bruton, following which he entered the office of the architect Sir George Oatley, where he was a pupil for two years. At the time Oatley was working on Bristol Cathedral and this provided the young Rome with the opportunity to study and draw a seminal building in English medieval architecture.

After National Service with the Royal Engineers, he set about qualifying as an architect, and studied at the Royal West of England Academy School of Architecture, gaining the RWA Diploma in Architecture in 1955. He then joined the office of Stephen Dykes Bower, who was Surveyor of the Fabric at Westminster Abbey and was engaged on a major restoration following war damage. During his time as Assistant Surveyor there, Rome acquired an impressive knowledge of Gothic architecture. In 1960 he moved back to Bristol and became Associate Architect in the office of Michael Torrens and Alan Crozier Cole, moving four years later into private practice. In 1956 he married Mary Barnard (who survives him), who was also an architect and worked with him, running a small office in Bristol, and later moving to Yatton.

Alan Rome’s easy-going and courteous manner endeared him to the local clergy and during the 1960s he became consulting architect to an ever increasing number of parishes in Somerset and adjoining counties; by 1975 the total of churches in his care exceeded 100. In 1972 he was appointed architect to Glastonbury Abbey, where Rome demonstrated his skill in maintaining an impressive complex of ruins of national importance on a paltry budget.

By this time, Rome’s sensitive, low-key and economical approach to the repair and conservation of churches came to the attention of deans and chapters of cathedrals. They liked him, and he quickly became a firm favourite: an avalanche of appointments to cathedrals and other great churches ensued, beginning with Leicester Cathedral in 1971. This was followed by Salisbury Cathedral (1974), Peterborough Cathedral (1976), Bath Abbey (1976), Wells Cathedral (1979), Lancing College Chapel (1984), Bristol Cathedral (1986), St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol (1986), St Edmundsbury Cathedral (1991) and Truro Cathedral (1992). He had also been shortlisted for the Surveyorship of Westminster Abbey, and was offered that of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, which he declined on account of distance.

With a burgeoning workload, Rome largely relinquished his involvement with parish churches. Nevertheless, he delegated very little to others except where new building was required, which he did not regard as his forte. Although he learned Gothic at the hands of Oatley, who had designed the Wills Memorial Building for Bristol University with full Victorian vigour, and served under Dykes Bower, who was renowned for draconian restoration, Rome did not follow slavishly in their footsteps.

He ardently believed in low-key restoration, with the emphasis on conservation, and often said that the hand of a good church architect should be invisible in the historic fabric. When instructed to subdivide the cloister walks at Wells, to install a shop and café, he designed glazed timber and metal screens which were cleverly fixed by clamping to the medieval mouldings without doing any physical damage. He knew the screens would be taken down again one day, as they were in 2009.

Besides being a conservation architect, he was an accomplished designer of sensitive new additions to historic buildings, always having a keen eye for correct detail and pleasing composition. He designed organ cases, screens, light fittings and a host of furnishings for the churches in his care. The organ case at Wells is one of his finest works. By the time Rome retired from practice in 2002, he had obtained a breadth of experience as an ecclesiastical architect that was scarcely rivalled amongst his contemporaries.

He was a committed churchman and attended St Andrew’s, Backwell. Aside from his professional involvement, Rome served the Anglican Church in other ways: the Council for the Care of Churches, 1972—96, and was a member of its Organs Advisory Committee; Trustee of the Churches Conservation Trust; Honorary Consulting Architect to the Historic Churches Preservation Trust; and a member of the Bath and Wells Diocesan Advisory Committee from 1978 until his death. In committee, he had an ability to see an immediate solution to a problem, which he would demonstrate with a delightful sketch done at speed on the back of an agenda paper. Rome had a flair for sketching, and for his own amusement he would design new churches in the Gothic idiom and sketch schemes for re-roofing and restoring landmark ruins, including Glastonbury Abbey Lady Chapel and the former cathedral at Peel, Isle of Man.

He read widely and had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the works of Victorian and later architects. Walking through the streets of London or Bristol with him was an educational experience. He was a champion of Sir Gilbert Scott and J L Pearson, when Victorian architecture was unfashionable, and Truro Cathedral was one of his favourite buildings. Alan Rome was always good company, had a quietly mischievous sense of humour, and a huge store of anecdotal knowledge. He was privately scathing about destructive actions of the recent past, particularly the loss of the Victorian screens from Salisbury Cathedral, and the resulting tunnel-like interior he compared to a Gothic railway station. He tackled every task with humility and did not seek the limelight, but was deservedly appointed OBE in 1997 for his services to ecclesiastical architecture.