ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am extremely grateful to the many people who have helped and encouraged me while researching Thomas Smith. I refer not only to individual persons but also to those members of staff of the many County Record Offices, Libraries, Museums and the like which I either visited personally or wrote to for information. I thank them all in the unabridged version of this study which may be referred to at the Bedfordshire Record Office, Lambeth Palace Library and at Hertford Museum.

However, mention must be made here to the invaluable help given to me by Mr Desmond Urban Smith and the late Mr T. Stafford Smith, great grandsons of Thomas Smith. It was information from Mr C. J. Pickford County Archivist and his colleague Mr Collett-White, of the Bedfordshire Record Office, which enabled me to make contact with them.  Mr T. Stafford Smith provided me with historical information about the family and both he and Mr Urban Smith allowed me to make copies of family photographs.

Active abroad on my behalf were Mr Alfred Head, a retired architect living in France who spared nothing to search out information on Smith’s church and villa work in Nice and Cannes, the Rev John Livingstone, the Anglican Chaplain in Nice and Signora Clemente of Naples.

I would like to acknowledge the help given by Mr Peter Walne and Dr Kate Thompson, the former and present County Archivists, of the County Record Office*, Hertford; also by Mrs Janice Brooker of the County Studies Department, County Hall, Hertford and by Mrs Rosemary Bennett of Hertford Museum. I also acknowledge the help given by Dr Christine Casey of Dublin with Louth Hospital.

I wish to thank the Marquess of Salisbury for his permission to study documents in the archives at Hatfield House and Mr Robin Harcourt Williams, the Librarian and Archivist, for his help. Mr James Dyer kindly permitted me to use material from his own work namely “Worthington George Smith” published by the Bedfordshire Historical Record Society, and Dr Ruth Richardson who sent me print-outs from her research project at London University which provided additional information about Thomas Smith’s architectural commissions.

Last and certainly by no means least, I am most grateful to my wife for her support, encouragement and constructive advice throughout the four years and more I have spent researching the life and work of this very interesting architect and surveyor.

* now Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies