Obituary: Bill Fraser, structural engineer

William Duncan Fraser, structural engineer.

Born: 5 November 1931, in Edinburgh.

Died: 10 May, 2011, in Edinburgh, aged 79.

My father, Bill Fraser, flourished professionally during a mini golden age of building in Edinburgh, in the 1960s. Working alongside architects Sir Basil Spence, Robert Matthew, Sir William Kininmonth, Morris & Steedman and Reiach & Hall, and their offices, he and his partners at Blyth and Blyth engineered a string of Edinburgh buildings whose humane and vigorous qualities are starting to regain the approval they deserve.

Edinburgh-born and bred, he was a brilliant student at the city's university, leaving with a first-class honours degree and a clutch of prizes, though returning soon to teach part-time.

He joined long-standing Edinburgh civil and structural engineers Blyth and Blyth, later becoming a partner, alongside Jim Eddison and Dick Young.

Blyth and Blyth were structural engineers to almost everything of worth built in Edinburgh at that time, and my father led the engineering of the first phases of the university's Pollock Halls of Residence, completed in 1964, Craigsbank Church in Drumbrae, 1966, Mortonhall Crematorium, 1967, British Home Stores in Princes Street, 1968, and the Scottish Provident Institution offices on the south side of St Andrews Square, completed in 1969.

These significant buildings have all been listed by Historic Scotland as being of historic significance, with Pollock Hall, Craigsbank Church and Mortonhall Crematorium achieving the rare Grade-A listing for buildings of "national or international significance". The buildings of that era are still, of course, unfashionable.

The exhortations to bring-in the bulldozers are, however, strangely similar to those from the 1960s, railing against then-unfashionable Victorian architecture. Times change, as Historic Scotland's recent listing of these structures shows.

My father engineered another controversial structure, whose beauty endures. St Michael's Church in Linlithgow, within the Peel of Linlithgow Palace, had lost its great stone crown, taken down in the 19th century because the church tower could not bear its weight.

When a replacement was planned in the 1960s, the solution clearly had to be lightweight, engineering-led.

The innovative laminated timber frame, with its gleaming aluminium skin, fabricated in Scott's Shipyard in Greenock, was by my father, working with Sir Basil Spence and his office, and sculptor Geoffrey Clarke.

I well remember, as a young boy, being driven along the newly-completed Edinburgh to Glasgow motorway and seeing the sun flash off it from across Linlithgow Loch.It was both familiar, being an abstract of the St Giles stone crown I knew so well, and unfamiliar, its clean and sharp brightness in dour post-war Scotland so beautifully combining an understanding of cultural context with optimism for the future.

But I never knew, until recently, of my father's involvement in it. Nor did I know, studying architecture myself, of his Edinburgh achievements, until I would enthuse to him about some gem of local modernism I had discovered and he would look surprised, and confess that he had engineered it. For he was possessed of that quiet modesty so characteristic of Scots of his time. He considered himself a lucky man, in his work and colleagues, his marriage to my mother, Margo Watters, his family, his friends and his sporting achievements - as an accomplished athlete, tennis player, rugby player for Watsonians' Firsts and lifelong golfer.

And he bore his final illness with great humour and stoicism.

A loved and valued friend, and servant to his community, it was fitting that his thanksgiving service should have been held at the beautiful Mortonhall Crematorium he engineered, with Edinburgh's spring sunshine dappling its walls.

My father is survived by my mother, Margo, my sisters Sheena Spence and Moira Clink, and his grandchildren, David, Morna, Hector, Danny, Issey, Peter, Laura and Mhairi.