Quinlan Terry

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 the years. 

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.

His 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 is also one of a small number of architects involved in the construction of buildings in Poundbury, an experimental new town in Dorset. 

His contribution to architecture and design was recognised in 2015 with a CBE.