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The fourth son of Sir Percy Angier Hurd MP and his Dundonian wife Hannah Swan Cox. He studied at Marlborough where Ian G Lindsay RSA was a year ahead of him, the pair meeting up again at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He removed to Edinburgh to complete his studies at ECA in 1930 or 1931 and worked there for the future RSA President [Sir] Frank Mears. Hurd wished to become an architectural writer and by the time of his arrival in Edinburgh had already formed a strong interest in the investigation of native traditions in architecture. In this he was partly inspired by the writings of Patrick Geddes HRSA. This interest led him into conservation issues and he enjoyed important affiliations to the National Trust for Scotland (writing an important book on its holdings in 1938) and with the Saltire Society. He served as its President in 1943-48 and as its Secretary for a further eight years thereafter. In 1941 he co-authored with Alan Reiach RSA a short book "Building Scotland, A Cautionary Guide" for the Saltire Society which ran to a second enlarged edition in 1944. A copy of this book is held in the RSA Library (L.2024.0026) Polio prevented his active service during the Second World War but he was attached to the Royal Engineers and for a time was responsible, against his instincts, for the removal of gates and railings for the war effort in and around Edinburgh. He was equally frustrated by bureaucracy in 1952 when he was commissioned to reconstruct large parts of Edinburgh's Canongate.