Alexander David McLees (9 November 1945- 14 June 2020).^[1][2] was a British architectural historian. From 1998 to 2001, he was a director in the Executive Committee of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB).^[1]

Early life and education

Alexander David McLees was born in St Andrews Fife, Scotland. He was the son of Mary Adamson Syrmington, a school teacher, and Alexander Gray McLees, the deputy rector in Madras College in St Andrews. This is where McLees and his older sister Margaret completed their studies.^[3] During his school years, McLees played on the college rugby team from 1962 to 1964,^[4] and in 1964 he won the college's Coronation Medal for History.^[5]

In 1969 he was awarded a Master of Arts degree by the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where he wrote his MA dissertation on parish church architecture in Gloucestershire.^[6]

Work and research

After his MA, McLees kept on researching British architecture. In 1972, McLees won the Reginald Taylor and Lord Fletcher essay prize from the British Archaeological Association^[7] and six years later, in 1978, he became a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.^[8]

McLees’ most circulated work is perhaps the Cadw guide to Castell Coch, written in 1988.^[9] The guide proved popular and has had two further editions: one published in 2005,^[10] and the other in 2018.^[11] In his research of the archives, he discovered previously unseen photographies of the castle, showing that Castell Coch had commercial vineyards before the 1930s- making it a rare case in Britain.^[12]

After this first collaboration with Cadw, McLees became an Inspector of Historical Buildings for the Welsh agency.^[13] McLees worked for Cadw again in 2013 in a campaign to preserve traditional Welsh terraced houses. He wrote a booklet about the historical value of such houses, with guidance on their care and preservation.^[14] McLees died in June 2020.

Bibliography

• McLees, A. D. (1969). Parish architecture in Gloucestershire (MA). London: Courtauld Institute of Art.
• McLees, D. (1972) 'Henry Yevele: disposer of the King's Works of masonry' (JBAA, 3rd ser., XXXVI (1973), 52-72).
• McLees, D. (1988). Castell Coch. Cadw.
• Jeremy Knight, John B. Hilling, Jeremy Knight, Jeremy Knight, Jack Spurgeon, Keith Kissack, John R. Kenyon & David McLees (1993) Castles, Archaeological Journal, 150:sup1, 26-43, DOI: 10.1080/00665983.1993.11785942.

References