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 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, 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 was a sculptor who made a statue of Charles II for the Royal Exchange.
Works
St John's Church, Hackney.
Great Synagogue, London.
Writings
Address to the Governors & Guardians of the Foundling-Hospital, by Jas. Spiller and Thos. Spencer,... intended as a justification of their reports and proceedings, in reply to observations upon their said reports and proceedings, by Samuel Pepys Cockerell, Esq. ; republished with an additional letter as additions as Reports upon the buildings erected on the estate of the Foundling Hospital.
Letter to John Soane on the subject of the new churches. Spiller also conducted a lengthy private correspondence with Soane, in which he criticised the Church Commissioners' enthusiasm for competitions and their emphasis on economy. Soane financed the printing of 500 copies of the first Letter. It was superseded by a Second Letter to John Soane ; more than 100 loose copies of the first one remain in the Soane archive.
