George Horsfield (1882-1956) was a British architect and archaeologist. He was Chief Inspector of Antiquities in Transjordan from 1928-1936. Horsfield began the initial clearance and conservation of Jerash in 1925, and excavated at Petra with his future wife, Agnes Conway in 1929.
George Horsfield was born in Meanwood, Leeds, Yorkshire, England on 19 April 1882 to Richard Marshall Horsfield, a leather manufacturer, and his wife Sarah Ellis Smart. He attended Leeds Grammar School from 1895-1901, when he moved to London to train in architecture in the office of noted Gothic architect George Frederick Bodley. After Bodley's death in 1907, Horsfield moved to the United States to work for the architectural firm Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson, where he was based in the Manhattan office of Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, a partner in the firm.
Horsfield returned to the UK in 1914 at the outbreak of war and volunteered for service in the Royal Naval Brigade. He saw action in the Gallipoli campaign in 1915, after which he was commissioned into the 7th West Yorkshire Regiment and took part in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. After contracting trench fever he was sent back to England to recover, and eventually declared fit for garrison duty overseas. Posted to India in 1918, Horsfield, now Major Horsfield and attached to the Royal Engineers, became the Chief Architect for Military Works, Rawalpindi, and Simla.
In 1923, Horsfield became a student at the recently established British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. Its first Director, John Garstang, valued Horsfield's architectural background.