Spear’s Review

One day in 1968, Quinlan Terry CBE teetered along the external cornice of the Pantheon in Rome to measure the pediment, wearing a five-piece tweed suit. It’s that attention to detail that has given the veteran architect an edge over his long career. 

His firm, started in 1928 by architectural giant Raymond Erith and taken over by Terry following Erith’s death in 1973, has become one of the leading champions of the Classical revival in the UK.

Work includes buildings such as the Maitland Robinson Library at Downing College at Cambridge, Brentwood Cathedral in Essex and Richmond Riverside along the Thames. He was also one of a small number of architects involved in the construction of buildings in Poundbury, an experimental town in Dorset. 

He was recognised in 2015 with a CBE for his contribution to architecture and design, and, in 2025, received the Traditional Architecture Group’s Lifetime Achievement award.