Eric Mercer

William Eric John Barbour-Mercer, architectural historian: born Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire 31 May 1918; Head of National Buildings Record, Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments in England 1976-81, Deputy Secretary 1979-81; OBE 1981; married 1946 Anne Lesser (two daughters); died Shrewsbury 13 September 2001.

Eric Mercer achieved acclaim in the world of art and architectural history chiefly because of his perception that art, architecture, and social evolution were closely linked.

In 1948 he joined the staff of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments of England, in whose employ he spent the rest of his working life. The Royal Commission was set up to survey and record the buildings and monuments of each county in England, in order to encourage the preservation of the archaeological and architectural heritage. Mercer began as an investigator, working in particular on the County Inventory volumes covering Dorset and Cambridge, and ended his career as Deputy Secretary of the commission and Head of the National Monuments Record.

In the early 1960s he became responsible for the emergency recording of monuments under threat, out of which emerged his English Vernacular Houses: a study of traditional farmhouses and cottages, published by the commission to celebrate European Architectural Heritage Year (1975). He was elected president of the Vernacular Architecture Group in 1979, an organisation created in 1952 to further the study of traditional buildings.

In this field he was critical of the use being made of distribution maps without dating analysis to point the way to the origin of ideas, the assumption being that the origin of a feature would be found in the area of greatest concentration. He contended that newly emerging features often initially enjoyed a very wide distribution, and that the concentrations came later. He was also deeply sceptical of ethnic links as the cause of localised differences and styles.

Another volume for the Royal Commission was a thematic collaboration with H.G. Ramm and R.W. McDowell, Shielings and Bastles (1970). He had previously written English Art, 1553-1625 (1962), volume 7 of the Oxford History of Art, and Furniture 700-1700, published in 1969 as part of a series on the social history of the decorative arts, besides numerous contributions to the periodical literature, in particular Past and Present.

Mercer was deeply influenced by Marxist theory and was convinced that most changes in architectural and artistic fashion arose from social change and that the links of specific types of building with class structure were very close. This opened a wide gap between him and some eminent art historians, who tended to think that fashion in art and architecture enjoyed an independent and self-contained evolution.

Eric Mercer was born in Chipping Norton in 1918, the son of an accountant, but after a spell in Basutoland, now Lesotho within South Africa, was brought up in south London. He was educated at Battersea Grammar School and Jesus College, Cambridge, gaining a double First in 1939 in the History Tripos. In 1940 he joined the Army, serving in the Intelligence Corps in North Africa and Italy. After the conclusion of hostilities he worked for a period on the Control Commission in Germany before moving to the Royal Commission on Historic Monuments.

Mercer was appointed OBE in 1981. He retired to Shropshire, but continued his researches with unabated energy preparing an architectural contribution for the Shropshire Victoria County History, which he eventually decided to publish independently. The appearance of this work is now eagerly awaited.

Peter Smith