CROFT, Leslie Thomas

Architect

CertArch 1940 (Witwatersrand); DipTP 1946 (Witwatersrand); BArch 1950 (Liverpool)

Leslie Thomas CROFT was born in Bulawayo in 1918. He attended Durban High School, and obtained a Certificate in Architecture from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1940. After service with the SA Engineers during Second World War he took his Diploma in Town Planning (Wits) in 1946.

He lectured for one year in the Department of Architecture of the Natal University College before taking the degree of BArch at the University of Liverpool School of Architecture. On his return in 1950 he commenced duties as lecturer and studio master in the School of Architecture at the University of Natal, where he was appointed senior lecturer in 1953, and Professor and Head of the Department in 1965. He organised the establishment of the Diploma course in Town Planning at the University of Natal in 1956. In 1961 he received an award from the Oppenheimer Trust to study imageability in towns in South America, the United States and Britain, and in 1969 he was awarded a Norman Hanson Research Grant to undertake the project "An Investigation into the Architecture-Building Process". He served on the Board of Education of the Institute, the Building Research Advisory Committee of the CSIR, the National Advisory Committee for Training in Industrial Design, and was been Chairman of the Design Institute, Natal Region, from 1968.

Obituary 2014

A long life ended on Monday, 1st December, just 10 days short of his 96th birthday.

Leslie Thomas Croft was born in Bulawayo in 1918 and attended DHS before acquiring a Certificate in Architecture (Wits), a BArch (Liverpool) and a DipTP (Wits).

Rejoined the staff of the fledgling School of Architecture at the University of Natal in 1950 and was appointed second Professor and Head of Department from 1965 - always donned in his grey dust jacket. During this incumbency he established the Faculty of Architecture and Allied Disciplines, 1974-2000, the structural basis for the apogee of what many alumni still fondly refer to as the 'Natal School'.

Notable buildings by Leslie include St Barnabas (1960) and St Elizabeth churches, on the Bluff and in Westville respectively, and Denis Shepstone (1971-2) building on what is now Howard College campus, UKZN.

During his term as Head and then as founder Dean of Faculty, Leslie would affectionately begin invitations to official functions with "Mary and I". After Mary's death Leslie married Lois, to whom we wish particular strength at this time.

(Rodney HARBER & Walter PETERS, KZNIA Journal. Vol. 39, Issue 3, 2014)

(Obituary submitted by Karlien van Niekerk, Senior Technical Assistant, Pretoria School of Architecture)

List of projects

With photographs
With notes

St Barnabas on the Bluff: 1960. Bluff, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal - Architect

St Elizabeth: n.d.. Westville, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal - Architect

University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, School of Architecture - Shepstone Building : 1975. Durban, KwaZulu-Natal - Architect

Books citing CROFT

ISAA. 1959. The Yearbook of the Institute of South African Architects and Chapter of SA Quantity Surveyors 1958-1959 : Die Jaarboek van die Instituut van Suid-Afrikaanse Argitekte en Tak van Suid-Afrikaanse Bourekenaars 1958-1959. Johannesburg: ISAA. pp 89, 220

ISAA. 1969. The Yearbook of the Institute of South African Architects and Chapter of SA Quantity Surveyors 1968-1969 : Die Jaarboek van die Instituut van Suid-Afrikaanse Argitekte en Tak van Suid-Afrikaanse Bourekenaars 1968-1969. Johannesburg: ISAA. pp 91, 179