R. Elsey Smith

R. Elsey Smith drew the plan of the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Kouklia (Old Paphos) in 1888. The Cyprus Exploration Fund had formed its party in late 1887 as students of the British School at Athens under Ernest A. Gardner, and "at a later period we were joined by Mr. R. Elsey Smith, as Architect of the expedition"¹. He reached Kouklia on 7 March 1888 and "at once set about making plans and drawings of the temple"; the last trenching in April was meant to let him finish the plan of the northern boundary¹. Anja Ulbrich and Thomas Kiely call him "the architect R. Elsey Smith of King's College, London"⁴.

The report on the season, "Excavations in Cyprus, 1887-88: Paphos, Leontari, Amargetti", appeared in the Journal of Hellenic Studies under the names of Gardner, David George Hogarth, M. R. James and Elsey Smith⁵. The surviving 1888 photographs of Kouklia are by Smith; Maier records that only two, of the temenos wall and the East Wing, were published, and that Hogarth's text and Smith's observations remained indispensable for the excavations of the 1990s⁷. A plan of a group of tombs near New Paphos in the report is credited to "Mr. Smith"².

Hogarth thanked him in Devia Cypria (1889) for photographs and an account of the carved woodwork in the church at Aschelia, which Smith had visited with Hogarth and James³. His dates of birth and death and his forenames are not recorded.