AN ARCHITECT whose work had a massive impact on the redevelopment of Chester in the 1960s has been knighted.

Donald Insall, the architect, planner and writer, has received a knighthood for services to conservation architecture in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Born in Bristol in 1926, Mr Insall has had a defining influence on the development of historic buildings’ conservation for over 50 years through the work of the award-winning architectural practice he founded, as well as a number of important public and advisory appointments, including as a founder Commissioner of English Heritage after 1983.

His philosophy has been based on recognition of the need to sustain continuity in the built heritage through a proactive and sympathetic approach to planning and renewal which allows for change.

His ground-breaking report on the ancient city of Chester in the early 1960s, at a time of destruction to historic town centres, set up procedures for good practice which are followed to this day and resulted in the appointment of the country’s first local authority conservation officer.

Mr Insall’s early career was informed by his experience as a Lethaby Scholar of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, which was set up by William Morris in 1877 in response to what Morris saw as the over-restoration of England’s great medieval cathedrals.

This event was marked 80 years later by Mr Insall’s report, The Care of Old Buildings, republished in expanded form as The Care of Old Buildings Today in 1972.

The lessons and experience of developing good conservation practice over 50 years, in which he frequently took a leading role, is the subject of his recent book, Living Buildings, published last year.

Mr Insall set up in private architectural practice in 1958, founding a firm that was to become Donald Insall Associates and which currently works out of eight centres across the UK.

The practice’s projects have been recognised in more than 150 awards and commendations, ten of which were in recognition of the work done to restore Windsor Castle after the major fire there in 1992.

He continues to lecture and to act in an advisory role to ICOMOS (the International Council on Monuments and Sites), the World Monuments Fund, and to Canterbury and Southwark Cathedrals.

Nicholas Thompson, current Chairman of Donald Insall Associates, has welcomed the announcement (which follows earlier honours – a CBE in 1995 and an OBE in 1981) as due recognition of a lifetime’s achievement in the field of historic buildings’ conservation, which continues to inspire others, notably those in the practice he founded.

Mr Thompson said: “The survival of historic Britain, as we know it today, owes much to his inspirational work.”