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Menu Home Upfront Now Up Books Towns Structures People Firms Lexicon AIKMAN, Henry Born: 1945 12 13 Died: 2025 06 12 Architect Obituary Henry Aikman was born in Cape Town on 13 December 1945 and lived in Clifton in his childhood and then in Wynberg and he matriculated at Wynberg Boys’ High in 1963. Then, attending UCT’s School of Architecture, he graduated with a B Arch in 1970. He married soon after and, after working for a small architectural practise in Stellenbosch for a couple of years, they left for the UK where he worked as a carpenter and became an expert in woodwork and timber. Returning to South Africa in 1981, he worked for the Cape Town City Council in its Town Planning Branch until 1990 when he moved to the then Regional Services Council (which later became the Cape Metropolitan Council). Leaving the CMC in 2003 and moving to Tulbagh, he began consulting as a heritage practitioner and was a founder member of the then Association of Heritage Assessment Practitioners (AHAP), which later became the Association of Professional Heritage Practitioners (APHP). He designed and built three very interesting family houses in Constantia, St James and Tulbagh and many commissioned small houses around the Cape; and his heritage practice during the last twenty years included many impact assessments in both urban and rural environments in the Western Cape. During the twenty years in Tulbagh he also contributed to various local cultural endeavours, perhaps most importantly as a trustee of the Tulbagh Museum. This brief chronology does, however, not capture his deep, often passionate interest in a wide variety of subjects from trees, to plant species (of which he had an encyclopaedic knowledge), to history (in particular the various wars of the last 150 years or so), to geo-politics and, of course, to food (and salads in particular - one with 36 components). In the world of the arts, and of painting and drawing, he was something of a connoisseur, with a real insight into the various schools and periods of painting and the visual arts. Indeed, there was little in the figurative plastic arts that did not interest him, and he was always an enthusiastic and supportive advocate of the work of both his wife, Nadine and of his son, Jake. Henry had wide interests and deep (and often arcane) knowledge of many things, and his friends and members of the heritage profession recalled the long telephone conversations during which he shared his interests and knowledge. Henry Aikman died suddenly on 12 June 2025 a week after apparently successful surgery. He left his wife, the painter Nadine Snooke, two sons (one a painter and one a beekeeper and plumber) and a grand-daughter and grand-son. ____________________________ Original text of obituary prepared by Steve Townsend and Henry Aikman’s family. Edited and submitted by William Martinson, December 2025.