[2] He was educated at King Edward VI School, Southampton,[3] before reading Modern History at Oxford.

[3] Working under Cyril Fox, who inspired his life-long interest in the vernacular architecture of Wales, in 1973 he was appointed Secretary of the commission.

[5] In 1975, the commission published Smith's seminal work, Houses of the Welsh Countryside, a "remarkable" thematic study which received much critical praise and in 1978 won Smith the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion from the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.

[3] His Telegraph obituary noted the work's "profound influence on the understanding and appreciation of domestic architecture in the Principality".

[2] The Chairman's foreword to the book recorded the commission's thanks for "a valuable contribution to an aspect of the past of Wales which has received too little attention".