Name James Spiller | ||
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Roads to Nowhere - James Spiller's Drum Kit Rundown
James Spiller (c.1761–1829) was an English architect and surveyor, a close associate of Sir John Soane. His designs included the Church of St John-at-Hackney, and the Great Synagogue, London.
Contents
Life
Spiller was a pupil of the architect James Wyatt and became a close friend of John Soane, who sometimes employed him as a surveyor, and to draft papers on subjects on which they shared views such as the evils of speculative building. John Summerson described Spiller as "a clever man, with a difficult temperament, which perhaps was against his emerging into the front rank of architects."
He was responsible for two major religious buildings in London. His Great Synagogue in Duke's Place was built 1788–90. Destroyed by bombing during the Second World War, it had tall Ionic colonnades and a flat ceiling. His new parish church of St John-at-Hackney – a bulky brick building – was constructed in 1792–7. In 1812–13 he added porches and, in stark contrast to the rest of the structure, a Portland Stone steeple with flowing curvelinear elements. In 1817 he remodelled the interior of James Wyatt's chapel of ease (later the Church of Saint John the Baptist) in Highgate Road, Kentish Town, and in 1820 he added a portico with square piers to Benjamin Dean Wyatt's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
He was surveyor to the British Fire Office (from 1799), the Royal Exchange Insurance, and the Eagle Insurance Corporation.
He died in at his home in Guildford Street, London on 3 May 1829
His brother John (1763–94) was a sculptor who made a statue of Charles II for the Royal Exchange.