Anna Holmes "Nancy" Northcroft OBE (23 March 1913 – 31 July 1980) was a New Zealand architect and town planner.
Northcroft won a 12-month British Council Empire Scholarship for Women, and travelled to England in 1942 to study town planning.
[7] She remained in England after the end of her scholarship, and from 1943 to 1946 she worked on surveys for the Association for Planning and Regional Reconstruction, based in London.
She also taught correspondence courses for members of the armed forces to assist them in working towards membership of the Town Planning Institute.
[3]: 174 She returned to New Zealand in 1947 after the end of the war, and in 1949 was appointed town planning officer at the Christchurch City Council.
[11] In 1957, she warned about the dangers of urban sprawl in Christchurch and the associated increasing costs of transport, power, water and drainage.
[15] In the later part of her career from 1963 to 1977, she worked in private practice for the Christchurch-based consultancy Davie Lovell-Smith.
[18] In 1960 she was the President of Canterbury Branch of the Federation of University Women,[19] and in 1967 she was a committee member of Friends of Te Wai Pounamu Māori Girls College, and a representative on the school board of governors.
[3]: 172 [16] In the 1978 New Year Honours, Northcroft was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, for services to town planning.