ArchitectureUnited Kingdom · Obituary
Donald Insall, the conservation architect who restored Windsor Castle, dies at 100
The Bristol-born architect argued old buildings should be kept in use, not preserved like marmalade, and shaped English heritage practice.
Donald Insall, who founded Donald Insall Associates in 1958 and led the restoration of Windsor Castle after the 1992 fire, has died aged 100, his studio announced. He drew a firm line between preservation, which he joked was for marmalade, and conservation, which meant helping old buildings, streets and towns carry on living usefully, with new uses where they made sense.
Born in Bristol in 1926, he set up his practice with Peter Locke and chaired it until 1998. The list of work is a tour of English heritage: Wotton House in Buckinghamshire, a baroque house saved from demolition in 1957; William Morris's Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire; and a study of Chester that took in more than four hundred buildings and led councils across England to appoint conservation officers. He was also a founding commissioner of English Heritage.
His method was disarmingly simple: make friends with the building and its users, write its life story, then build on its strengths. His book Living Buildings was reprinted in 2018 with a foreword by the then Prince of Wales.
A good prompt, next time you visit Kelmscott or Windsor, to notice the care that keeps such places in daily use rather than under glass.
Our summary of a story from Dezeen, published 13 October 2026. Read the original
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From Dezeen