Quinlan Terry - Work

Work

Quinlan Terry works principally in classical Palladian architectural styles. The website of the firm of Quinlan and Francis Terry LLP states that the firm continues the architectural style of the practice which was started by Raymond Erith in 1928, and specialises in high quality traditional building mostly in Classical idioms. The practice is based in Dedham, Essex and employs between 15 and 20 staff. A book by David Watkin entitled Radical Classicism: The Architecture of Quinlan Terry (New York: Rizzoli International Publications) was published in 2006.

The first work by the older man on which the younger Terry had a major role was the new house Kings Waldenbury, Hertfordshire, completed for the Pilkington family in 1971 when new building in a classical manner was deeply unfashionable. During the three year construction period of the house Terry kept a diary published later in which he bemoans the modern world and stoically defends his conservative, reformed, evangelical faith.

His design for the library at Downing College, Cambridge won the Building of the Year Award in 1994. One of his best known works is Brentwood Cathedral in Essex. This is radical extension of a nineteenth century Roman Catholic Gothic revival church is in the English Baroque manner owing much to James Gibbs and Thomas Archer and makes little or no attempt to be in keeping with the older building. Terry's new work has a portico based on the south portico of St Paul's cathedral designed by Sir Christopher Wren. Unusually, all five classical orders of architecture were used and Terry has said in lectures that classical architecture as an expression of the Divine order.

During the 1980s he was also appointed by Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister, to renovate the interiors of 10 Downing Street, restored 40 years previously by Raymond Erith, Terry's teacher, after war damage. Terry's work there is more assertive than Erith's. In Gloucestershire, he designed Waverton House, where he used the style made popular by Matthew Brettingham in the late 18th century, featuring a central staircase lit from above, surrounded by rooms on both floors.

In 1989, he designed a series of three new villas for the Crown Estate Commissioners in Outer Circle in London's Regent's Park. Building in the Park was controversial but said to the be in the spirit of the Prince Regent's original though unrealised intentions for the Park, which was to contain numerous villas for Regency courtiers surrounding a new Royal palace. Terry's three new villas have near identical plans, based on Palladio's Villa Saraceno, but the external elevations vary showing respectively Gothic, Italian Mannerist and muscular Neo-classical features in the manner of William Chambers. In the mid-1990s, Terry designed the restoration of St Helen's Bishopsgate, controversially turning the orientation of the medieval church through 90 degrees, moving or removing some fittings, and reworking its previous Tractarian Anglican layout into a Georgian stripped-back meeting house plan informed by the precepts of Reformation theology, in tune with its current firmly evangelical congregation.

Quinlan Terry designed the external envelope of New Margaret Thatcher Infirmary at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, with Steffian Bradley Architects as the lead consultant and planners for the building; a new Georgian Theatre for Downing College Cambridge; new offices, retail & residential development at 264 - 267 Tottenham Court Road, London; offices & retail at 22 Baker Street, London; Queen Mother Square, Poundbury.