Salvin belonged to a junior branch of the ancient Salvin family of Croxdale Hall, County Durham and was christened at St Brandon's church, Brancepeth. His father, Colonel Salvin, was often on the move during his service career and young Anthony spent much of his boyhood at Willington, where he lived with his grandfather. He later attended Durham School at its old site on Palace Green.
Salvin eventually became a pupil of the great John Nash in London, and his later career saw him develop into an authority on the improvement and restoration of old castles. He it was who rebuilt the keep of Durham Castle, after it had become a ruin, in 1839-40. Visitors may well think it a part of the mediaeval fabric, but that was Salvin's art. He did much the same thing at Windsor Castle and the Tower of London. It is a kind of sham, of course, but it helps to preserve the impression of what remains and few nowadays would question his approach.
Apart from his work at the cathedral, Salvin built Holy Trinity church in Darlington and St Stephen in Mile End Road, South Shields. It is in Northumberland, though, that Salvin really made his mark, particularly at Alnwick Castle, which had become ruinous by the middle of the eighteenth century. It had been made habitable by the first Duke of Northumberland with the help of Paine and the great Robert Adam, who gave to the castle the 'most complete and most fanciful gothick decorations he ever designed', as Pevsner puts it. This was to please the Duchess who was 'junketaceous' according to Horace Walpole. Algernon Percy (q.v.) , the fourth Duke, however, decided to do away with all this frippery and employed Anthony Salvin as his architect, spending a quarter of a million pounds on building and decoration. The result was the restoration of the formidable border fortress we see today. Prudhoe Tower is entirely by Salvin, as is the adjoining chapel. These and the other building works reflected the Duke's ideas of mediaeval chivalry.