Charles Sidney Toy, architect, architectural historian, author and authority on the world's castles and fortresses, was born on 16th February 1875 at 8 Clinton Terrace, Redruth, Cornwall. In 1882 they moved to 7 Bond Street, Redruth. In 1885, aged ten, he received a pass in Elementary Drawing to Scale, and an excellent in Freehand Drawing of the First Grade in the annual examination of children in Elementary schools, talents that he would develop and later draw on in his professional architectural and writing career. He left the local Board School at 15 and started work in Tuckingmill making rock drilling equipment (The Climax Rock Drill company). On March 2nd 1893 he was baptised in St. Andrew's Redruth. Later that year the family moved up to Westcliffe. By 1896 his six-year apprenticeship at Tuckingmill ended and he left Cornwall for good on being recommended through his father's friend to a job in Glasgow at a draper's. However he managed to get a position at Napier and Sons, Engineers and Shipbuilders, and the 1901 census records him living at 22 Caernarvon St, Glasgow, aged 26, as a 'steam engine maker'. Despite this engineering background, he had for a few years been thinking about his future and had seriously considered the priesthood of the church, having decided to leave the Methodism of his parents and become an Anglican. In his son John's words: 'Sidney had a determination to overcome his origins and, particularly in the 1900s - 1920s, including the fact that he had not gone to University. But this inner drive goes back also to his father, John Toy, who as a boy had to go down the tin mines, but he came out of mining as soon as he was able and became a travelling draper. This obviously worked as he later opened a draper's shop in Redruth where he lived virtually all his life. This must have prospered because the family moved to Westcliffe, a prominent large house on a spur, looking down on the town centre and station. It was still there when I was last in Redruth a few years ago although the family renting it told me that the owner wanted to pull it down. His elder brother, James Toy, was the same - he left Redruth as a young man, trained for the Anglican priesthood, was ordained, and spent many years in Africa.

In 1902 Sidney finally decided that architecture was to be his profession and he started work at an architect's office in Glasgow. Two years later he left Glasgow for London, which was to be his home until 1939, working first in Norwood and then with the famous architectural practice of Caröe & Partners until 1906, when he went to France for four months preparing some architectural sketches and drawings of medieval buildings (e.g. St Ouen, Rouen). W D Caröe (1857-1938) was a major figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement and appears to have been a significant influence in Toys's deep interest in antiquity - churches, castles, fortresses and their conservation. Sidney's sole commission during 1907 was a Litany Desk in St Matthews, Westminster, where he became a friend of Arthur de Winton. In 1908 he joined the Victoria County History team, at the same time trying to establish himself as an independent architect. Whilst with the VCH research team he met church historian, priest and publisher Edward Dorling and John Queckett and both became life-long friends.

In 1913 Sidney's father, John, died in Redruth and he designed the tombstone in the churchyard of the parish church of St Euny's. When the First World War started in 1914, he was deemed too old to join up at 39 but he joined the Old Boys Corps, exercising in Wembley Park. In 1920 he paid his first of many formative visits to Constantinople (Istanbul), travelling via Pisa and San Gimignano in Italy, and staying with the Middleton-Edwards family. The 1920s were given over to various architectural commissions on a freelance basis and some lecturing. After a faltering start he became ARIBA in 1923 and FRIBA1 the following year. In 1925 contracts were signed for an extension to St. Andrews, Redruth. In March 1928 he left England for a tour of the Middle-East, partly funded by himself and partly by retired barrister and antiquarian Harold Sands (1893-1935), and covered Egypt, Palestine and Constantinople. In Constantinople, through the agency of his friends there, the Middleton-Edwards, he met two ladies teaching at the English High School at Pera. He fell in love, at the age of 53, with one, Violet Doudney, then age 38. Following his return to London, he wrote to Violet proposing marriage and they formally became engaged on December 31st 1928 in Santa (Hagia) Sophia, Constantinople, where, at the 'east end of the north aisle we had a little service to ourselves'.Sidney and Violet married in Leicester in July 1929 and settled in at 1, The Cloisters, Temple, EC4, London.

Major architectural commissions were difficult to find during the late 1930s, but Sidney remained busy writing articles and book reviews for the Builder magazine with his main interest centered on Byzantine and Levantine architecture and English and French ecclesiastical and military buildings. His collaboration with Harold Sands continued up until 1935, with Sidney accepting commissions to draw plans and survey various English castles - Corfe, The Round Castles of Cornwall, Conwy, and medieval domestic buildings in Sussex. Holidays were regularly spent in Yorkshire, the South-West, and Northern France with Sidney enlisting his young family to hold the measuring tapes wherever he went, one of the abiding memories of his eldest son, John. Throughout the 1930s much of Sidney's work was also devoted to preparing his first book, which, in 1938, was accepted for publication by Heinemann and appeared as 'Castles - A History of Fortifications from 1600 BC to 1600 AD' in 1939. It was dedicated to his wife, Violet, 'in gratitude for consistent help and encouragement'. It is a wide-ranging book, covering the period from 1600 BC to sixteenth century fortresses, and is particularly memorable for its numerous ground-plans, sections, elevations and photographs, mainly drawn or taken by the author which 'he has himself examined and surveyed most of the fortifications described'. In his Preface, he acknowledges the help of Leonard Woolley, and Mortimer Wheeler in reading through the chapters on ancient Babylon, Assyria, Asia Minor and Greece. and appears influenced by Hamilton Thompson, Mackay Mackenzie, and W Douglas Simpson for his views on the development of British castles. It is noteworthy, in fact, ground breaking, for its 180 illustrations, with his own surveyed and drawn plans and signature of 'Sidney Toy, Mens. et Delt'. (Measured and Drawn).

The timing of its publishing on the eve of the tumultuous events of World War II was unfortunate. The stock of copies of the book soon became exhausted, and whilst the issue of further copies was prevented by the diversion of effort in other directions, the national appeal for metal resulted in the melting down of all the blocks and printer's type of the work. The family, now with three young boys, were hard pressed financially, and these years were anything but easy in the comparatively cramped quarters of Temple Chambers, later destroyed in the Blitz. Following the commencement of WWII in 1939 the family had to move to safer premises and relocated to Epsom, Surrey, where they stayed until Violet suffered a sad, untimely death in 1952, aged 62. She herself had a been a spirited woman - Oxford (St Hilda's) educated, Suffragette, radical, teacher, poet and writer. In 1912 she was sentenced two months imprisonment with hard labour for committing wilful damage the home of the Home Secretary, Mr. McKenna. In 1940, Sidney, now 65, joined the St Paul's (fire) watch, with duty here on Friday nights and, in 1941 at Westminster Abbey on Sundays. Amongst a number of other war-time jobs one included advising on the national 'confiscating' of wrought-iron railings and gates for the war effort. In 1944 the possibility of a job at the War office arose surveying and assessing the condition of historic buildings and artefacts damaged by war. Sir Leonard Woolley had been appointed as UK head of The Monuments and Archives program under the Civil Affairs and Military Government Sections of the Allied armies. He interviewed Sidney, who, when asked his age, declared, truth- fully, 69. Consequently he was turned down for the post. Woolley suggested he ought to have put his age down as '52' as no one would have known.

In June 1953, Heineman published Sidney's second major work, Castles of Great Britain, a very successful publication that ran to four editions: 1953, 1954, 1963, and 1966 and reprinted in 1970. The Daily Telegraph commented at the time: 'It puts all interested in the life of the Middle Ages in possession of knowledge that was virtual ly inaccessible. It is impossible to imagine a better book on the subject…. outstanding example of exact scholarship at the service, at once, of the student and the general reader', and the Times Literary Supplement noted: 'the numerous ground- plans and diagrams are the outstanding feature of a volume designed for the general reader. The traveller with Mr. Toy's book in his car or ruck- sack will find plans, not too detailed, of most of the castles he is likely to visit'. Whilst the narrative of British castle development has changed considera- bly over the intervening years, it is a mark of the book's distinction that it continues to be regularly referenced by all castellologists today, especially in connection with his detailed, personally surveyed plans and sections, which in most cases have never been bettered or even attempted. A look through the current edition of the CSG Journal will evidence this. In the Preface to the fourth and final edition, Toy summarises the considerable additional information included in each succeeding edition and readers who may not yet have a copy are advised to acquire a second-hand copy of the fourth edition of 1966, completed when he was 90. In July 1955, with a slightly changed title, but a greatly enhanced date range and content, A History of Fortification from 3000 BC to 1700 AD appeared. The 1939 original was reworked and its scope extended. The first 1939 book had been restricted to fortifications in Europe and the Near East.1 In the 1955 rework a large amount of continental and Levantine material was added in a wide sweep for Acre through to Moscow and to Constantinople. He makes one particularly important comment in the Preface: 'A survey and study of many of the castles of Europe, the Levant and elsewhere has led the author to the conclusion that no clear grasp of the history of military architecture can be found from the study of examples in one country alone and that a more general treatment is essential to a proper understanding of the subject'. His unique ability to coherently relate and connect architectural forms, features, styles, and innovations appearing almost simultaneously in different lands in Western Europe, is an outstanding feature of this work, and it emphasises just how quickly new ideas - whether militarily inspired or just fashion trends - were diffused across the continent.

Still possessing the energy of a man half his age, Sidney then set out, at 80, on a six month visit to India in 1955/56, perhaps prompted to go there through conversations with Sir Leonard Woolley during the war. He returned to India for a second visit of three months in December 1957. Whilst still abroad, Toy's pioneering work Strongholds of India, published in the UK by Heinemann in January 1958 was well received by the general public. John Burton in a detailed review and analysis of many of the sites covered by Toy stated: 'This book is the first attempt to present a picture of Indian fortification as a whole, based on Mr Toy's personal observations and investigations during the winter of 1955-6, during which time he inspected and measured these two dozen 'medieval' fortifications in North India, Rajasthan, Gujarat, the Deccan, and South India - an exacting task for any man and a truly fantasticpiece of work for a scholar in retirement. Mr Toy is known as an authority on European military architecture, and it was because he was struck with the dearth of reliable literature on the forts of India that he set out to fill the gap himself. The results of his labours have provided a different approach to fortified works from that with which we have become familiar in the material mentioned above, and it has been refreshing for us to see these fortresses again, as it were, through a different pair of eyes, and for this reason alone Mr Toy's book must earn our gratitude and admiration'. Whilst Burton-Page then continues to deal with specific problems at various sites raised by Toy's analysis he supports Toy on his general approach to the subject, commenting: 'In a letter which appeared in the Times Literary Supplement of 11 April 1958, I defended Mr Toy's approach, and I still adhere to the view that Mr Toy was right to withhold speculation on these and similar questions in view of the limitation of his data, and that his book, based on his experience of two dozen sites only and owing nothing to any previous personal knowledge of the subcontinent is in the circumstances meritorious and valuable and that in this very limitation lies its strength'. That Strongholds of India has withstood the test of time is evidenced by the comment of scholar and critic Paul Yule when he recently reviewed Studies on Fortification in India by Jean Deloche, published in 2007. He noted that: 'This book succeeds the pioneering Sidney Toy, The Strongholds of India (London, 1957); the information then available conditioned its small size and scope'. A sequel The Fortified Cities of India followed in 1965, when Toy was turning 90, and followed further personal survey. A remarkable achievement. Toy's work as a conservation architect is best remembered by his keen interest in stained glass and historical restoration projects. He made proposals for additions to St. Stephen's Launceston, St. Andrews, Redruth, and the restoration of elements of Skenfrith Castle, but these were eventually carried out by other architects. He secured contracts for the post-war restoration of St. Mary- le-Strand, London in 1946, the work at the east end of Christ Church cathedral, Nassau, Bahamas in 1950; the reredos and choir stalls at St Barnabas, Epsom, and many smaller houses and wood furniture commissions. There is a memorial plaque to Sidney in St Mary-le-Strand, with which he had such a long connection first as Church- warden, then as consulting architect. One particular work, of which he was proud was the design of windows at the 15th century parish church of St Just in Penwith, Cornwall, in 1927. He was of the school of thought that angels and saints, the messengers, should be shown, not in long togas, but in tunics, so that their walk should not be impeded, an idea that is now fully accepted, as thus depicted on St Gabriel and St Michael at St. Just.

Sidney Toy died in 1967, aged 91, on February 6th, at the Royal Free Hospital, London, after a fall at his home, just a few weeks before the final edition of Castles of Great Britain was published. He had been living in a flat granted by the City of London in the Golden Lane Estate, looked after by his youngest son, Alaric until his death. He enjoyed a rewarding and much traveled writing career spanning over 50 years, and was widely respected for his scholarship. Obituaries referred to the fact that he measured every fortress and castle that he wrote about, except one, the Kremlin'. It is his published works on castles and fortifications that will live on as his memorial. His family have now kindly arranged for his archive of diaries, notes, sketches and what original plans remain in their ownership to be donated to the Society of Antiquaries of London. This will complement those drawings already held within the Harold Sand's collection (MS725). There is much more to Sidney Toy's scholarly interests and achievements than just castles, and a study of his lively articles in The Builder and the RIBA Journal, held in the RIBA library bear testimony not only to his depth of constructional knowledge of how old buildings functioned, but his enlightened views on a whole range of contemporary architectural and conservation issues.