John Anstey (1934-1999)

Citation

Earl, J. (1999), "John Anstey (1934-1999)", Structural Survey, Vol. 17 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ss.1999.11017baf.001

John Anstey (1934-1999)

Tony Poole, recently retired editor of Structural Survey, writes:

Many readers will have been shocked and saddened to learn of the death of John Anstey, a regular contributor to the journal. John was probably best known to many surveyors ­ particularly in the world of party walls ­ as founder of the Pyramus and Thisbe Club following the well-known Thompson v. Wall Street case in 1973.

This club has become a national forum for the discussion of major cases. Leading members of the club working with the Earl of Lytton finally succeeded in having the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 passed, which had the notable effect of extending party wall legislation to the whole of England and Wales.

John married twice and was still on excellent terms with his first wife ­ our sympathies go to both of them.

John Earl knew John well and has penned the following appreciation of his life.

Beyond the boundary

Readers of this journal, who have been regularly informed and entertained by John Anstey (over 60 substantial contributions) will find it hard to believe that this attractive man, who so obviously enjoyed every minute of his life, has taken his final bow.

To those who knew him well, to say that he was a remarkable being is to state the blindingly obvious, but his blend of skill, wit, wisdom and mischief was truly unique.

John Swithin Campbell Knight Anstey experienced early misfortune when, having been sent to Ireland on the outbreak of war, he contracted polio. This happened while he was in hospital, narrowly escaping death with a burst appendix. Returning to England he spent some months in an orthopaedic hospital whose nursing regime fell not far short of the sadistic. This may have had something to do with the fact that his father was a pacifist, and a child of seven is an easy target of the self-righteous. He survived with mobility in his limbs, but in somewhat less than perfect shape.

It is characteristic of the man that, in some discovered autobiographical notes, there is no mention at all of his physical condition, apart from a single quotation from Private Eye, describing him as "vertically challenged". He simply ignored what should have been a major disadvantage, developing physical power to match his spritual strength. He was, to the end, quite intolerant of concessions being made for disability.

For all his energy, however (and his trainees may be pleased to know this) he was not an industrious student. His last of many schools was St Paul's, where, to use his own words, his "principal activities, apart from avoiding work, were coxing and singing, which two do not go very well together".

On leaving school he trained as a loss adjuster for a while and then went on to a firm of city quantity surveyors in a location which he found convenient for attending the Fleet Street Jazz Club. His parents' divorce made it possible for him to apply for a previously denied grant and, after a short spell working for a tourist agency, he was able to read history at Queen Mary College, University of London. There he spent the whole of his first year (1955) playing bridge and table tennis, sailing, listening to jazz and singing in the choir and madrigal group. This left no time to pass Latin (an essential for entry) so he was thrown out.

After what appears to have been an uncomfortable time in the reinforced concrete division of H. Fairweather & Co., he took a job with the National Coal Board, teaching English to Hungarian refugees from the revolution. By this time he had passed Latin and returned to QMC, where he gave up bridge and took up chess. His studies still took second place and he was again threatened with ejection. Just before his finals a new girlfriend refused to go out with him unless he did at least four hours work a day (an absurdly small commitment, but she was, he said "a realist"). On the opening day of finals his tutor said: "Well, Anstey, let justice be thwarted". It was. He scraped a lower second.

Although a confessed idle student, John was a natural leader. In his time at QMC he had been President of the Music Society, President of the Jazz Club, an elected member of the Union, a member of the Athletics Delegacy, winner of the College championship in sailing in every year he was eligible, and a "purple" (equivalent of a blue) in the university sailing team. He also conducted the College Madrigal Group and sang in principal roles in the College operas. He would have liked to go on to do a diploma in education (choosing a good sailing venue) but was prevented by his professor having written a testimonial which all too accurately described his enthusiasm for work.

John's father, the distinguished surveyor Bryan Anstey, then employed him, giving him generous time off for study. He passed the direct membership examinations of both the Chartered Auctioneers and the RICS, achievements which he had said may have been due to the examiners having shrunk from failing Bryan Anstey's son. My guess is that, having decided on this occasion to succeed, he simply gave his mind to the task.

After a time at the LCC and GLC, as "the highest paid tea-boy in County Hall" (and, it is hardly necessary to add, a team chess player) he returned to his father's firm to work on the King's Reach project. He was later consulted by the GLC about St Katharine's Dock and urged that it should be developed as a waterside attraction, rather than filled in. This he regarded as his major contribution to London's environment.

Bryan Anstey, who was a rights of light consultant, suggested that a party walls specialisation would be useful and John discovered an immediate aptitude and enthusiasm for solving problems in this area. He took over the practice from his father in 1974, eventually taking Lance Harris and Graham North into partnership. The firm is now the most highly specialised of all party wall boundary disputes and rights of light practices, doing virtually nothing else.

In 1995, Anstey Horne & Co. celebrated their bicentenary with concerts at Wigmore Hall by the Consort of Musicke and Bishopsgate Institute by the New Orleans Ragtime Band. Music, for John, had no artificial boundaries.

Having been denied his early ambition to teach, he nevertheless demonstrated a remarkable ability to convey knowledge painlessly in a series of books. His Valuation of Rights of Light (1981), Party Walls and What To Do With Them (1986), Rights of Light and How to Deal With Them (1988), Boundary Disputes and How to Resolve Them (1990), and various other handbooks and teaching packs ­ and a recorded tape on party walls for Owlion ­ are all presented in a disarmingly chatty style which enhances rather than dilutes their value as authoritative textbooks. A personal enthusiasm for monastic ruins also led to a book, named (much against his will) Anstey's Abbeys (1987).

His Introduction to the Party Walls etc. Act 1996 marked the end of a triumphant campaign when, building on the work of many others, he saw party wall legislation extended to the whole of England and Wales.

In 1974 John had called the inaugural meeting of what was to become the Pyramus and Thisbe Club, formed to promote the exchange of information about interesting cases among party wall surveyors. The annual entertainments of the club from 1975 to 1996 featured Party Wall Performers, a vocal group closely related to another company directed by John, the Parlour Performers. For the hilarious P & T concerts he and Alan Gillett wrote and sang over 200 songs, all somewhat loosely related to party walls and all witty parodies on operatic arias, cabaret and music hall songs and the like.

In 1992, as co-ordinator of a Committee for the Future of London's Architectural Heritage, he attended a meeting (at which I was present) where he bore with dignity unpardonable personal abuse from the head of a national body, who later said, presumably in mitigation, "I didn't know he had had polio". The Private Eye report of the episode (referred to earlier) described John as "the distinguished building surveyor and philanthropist".

He certainly spent generously on good causes. As well as promoting concerts and operatic performances, he donated two lifeboats, sponsored a boat yard in Kerala, a classroom in Amurpurkashi and an eye clinic in India. He was benefactor to young artists, devised the "Sponsor a Plank Scheme" for the SS Great Britain and donated his services to the Globe project. His other interests, from jazz and sailing (he was active in the RYA in particular) to architectural history and croquet (a late enthusiasm, but one where, characteristically, he became a significant figure) are almost too numerous to list.

John was a teetotal, non-smoking vegetarian who believed in the Christian ethic without being attached to any organized form of religion. Early in 1998 he suffered a substantial heart attack, but again proved to be a survivor. He was not so lucky when, in December, after no more than two weeks of headaches and sickness, he was diagnosed as having a brain tumour which would give him only a few months to live. It was, he admitted, "a bit of a blow".

He rejected having chunks cut out of his head when the surgeon said frankly that, faced with the same diagnosis, he would buy the best bottle of claret he could afford and sit on a Scottish hillside to drink it. John died peacefully on 30 March 1999 and was buried in a woodland grave in Carlisle. His coffin was made of recycled floorboards.

John's idiosyncrasies were, I am told, irritating to some people. Many, many more felt nothing but admiration for his professionalism and deep affection for him as a friend. His second wife, Rosemary, who was his constant support in his final illness, will continue to live in a house they had just bought in Northumberland. There is to be a celebration of his life later in the year.