Edward Schroeder Prior (1852–1932) was an architect, instrumental in establishing the arts and crafts movement. He was one of the foremost theorists of the second generation of the movement, writing extensively on architecture, art, craftsmanship and the building process and subsequently influencing the training of many architects. He was a major contributor to the development of the Art Workers Guild and other organisations that lay at the heart of the movement's attempts to bring art, craftsmanship and architecture closer together. His scholarly work, particularly A History of Gothic Art in England (1900), achieved international acclaim. He became one of the leading architectural educationalists of his generation. As Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University he established the School of Architectural Studies. Initially his buildings show the influence of his mentor Norman Shaw and Philip Webb, but Prior experimented with materials, massing and volume from the start of his independent practice. He developed a style that was intensely individual and a practical philosophy of construction that was perhaps nearer to Ruskin's ideal of the "builder designer" than that of any other arts and crafts architect. The buildings of his maturity, such as The Barn, Exmouth, and Home Place, Kelling are amongst the most original of the period. In St Andrew's Church, Roker, he produced his masterpiece, a church that is now recognised as one of the best of the early 20th century. Biography Family Edward Schroeder Prior was born in Greenwich on 4 January 1852, his parents' fourth son, one of eleven children. His father John Venn Prior, who was a barrister in the Chancery division, died at the age of 43 as a result of a fall from a horse. Edward was aged 10 at the time. His mother, Hebe Catherine Prior, moved the family from their house in Croom's Hill, Greenwich to Harrow, where Edward's eldest brother John Templer was at school and where local resident families paid reduced fees for day boys. Here, next door to the house of Matthew Arnold, she started a school for children whose parents were in India, and Edward was one of its first pupils. Harrow School In 1863 at the unusually young age of 11, Edward entered Harrow School. Here his interest in natural history, art, architecture and science was fostered, particularly by F. W. Farrar, H. M. Butler and B. F. Westcott, his housemaster and private tutor. (Prior remained a