View from Latin Convent – Jerusalem

Richard Phené Spiers

Spiers (1838 – 3 October 1916 London) was an English architect and author. He was educated in the engineering department of King’s College London, and proceeded thence to the atelier of Charles-Auguste Questel at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, for upwards of three years, a method of study rare for an architectural student in those days. On his return he won the gold medal and travelling scholarship of the Royal Academy, and in 1965 the Soane medal of the R.I.B.A.

He occupied a unique position amongst the English architects of the latter half of the 19th century, his long mastership of the architectural school at the Royal Academy of Arts having given him the opportunity of moulding and shaping the minds of more than a generation of students.

Spiers wrote most of the articles dealing with architecture for the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. His works include new edition of James Fergusson’s History of Architecture and further volumes on Indian and Eastern art.