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George Gilbert Scott

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Template:Short description Template:Other people Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox architect Sir George Gilbert Scott Template:Post-nominals (13 July 1811 – 27 March 1878), largely known as Sir Gilbert Scott, was a prolific English Gothic Revival architect, chiefly associated with the design, building and renovation of churches and cathedrals, although he started his career as a leading designer of workhouses. Over 800 buildings were designed or altered by him.<ref>Cole, 1980, p. 1.</ref>

Scott was the architect of many notable buildings, including the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station, the Albert Memorial, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, all in London, St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow, the main building of the University of Glasgow, St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh and King's College Chapel, London.

Life and career

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File:George Gilbert Scott full.jpg
Scott in 1863

Born in Gawcott, Buckingham, Buckinghamshire, Scott was the son of the Reverend Thomas Scott (1780–1835) and grandson of the biblical commentator Thomas Scott. He studied architecture as a pupil of James Edmeston and, from 1832 to 1834, worked as an assistant to Henry Roberts. He also worked as an assistant for his friend, Sampson Kempthorne, who specialised in the design of workhouses,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> a field in which Scott was to begin his independent career.<ref name="Bayley 1983, p. 43">Bayley 1983, p. 43</ref>

Early work

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File:Church at Wall, Staffordshire.JPG
Parish Church of St John in Wall, Staffordshire

Scott's first work was built in 1833; it was a vicarage for his father in the village of Wappenham, Northamptonshire. It replaced the previous vicarage occupied by other relatives of Scott. Scott went on to design several other buildings in the village.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In about 1835, Scott took on William Bonython Moffatt as his assistant and later (1838–1845) as his partner. Over ten years or so, Scott and Moffatt designed more than forty workhouses in the wake of the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Their first churches were St Mary Magdalene at Flaunden, Herts (1838, for Samuel King, Scott's uncle);<ref>Template:National Heritage List for England</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> St Nicholas, Newport, Lincoln (1839);<ref>Template:National Heritage List for England</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> St John, Wall, Staffordshire (1839);<ref>Template:National Heritage List for England</ref> and the Neo-Norman church of St Peter at Norbiton, Surrey (1841).<ref>Template:National Heritage List for England</ref> They built Reading Gaol (1841–42) in a picturesque, castellated style.<ref>Hitchcock 1977, p. 146</ref>

Gothic Revival

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File:Nikolaikirche Hamburg Entwurf.jpg
Nikolaikirche, Hamburg, Germany (1845–80), bombed during World War II and now a ruin

Meanwhile, he was inspired by Augustus Pugin to participate in the Gothic Revival.<ref name="Bayley 1983, p. 43"/> While still in partnership with Moffat.<ref>Hitchcock 1977, p. 152</ref> he designed the Martyrs' Memorial on St Giles', Oxford (1841),<ref>Eastlake 1872, p. 219</ref> and St Giles' Church, Camberwell (1844), both of which helped establish his reputation within the movement.

Commemorating three Protestants burnt during the reign of Queen Mary, the Martyrs' Memorial was intended as a rebuke to those very high church tendencies which had been instrumental in promoting the new authentic approach to Gothic architecture.<ref>Template:Cite book The terms of the commission had stipulated that it should be based on the Eleanor Cross at Waltham</ref> St Giles' was in plan, with its long chancel, of the type advocated by the Ecclesiological Society: Charles Locke Eastlake said that "in the neighbourhood of London no church of its time was considered in purer style or more orthodox in its arrangement".<ref>Eastlake 1872, p. 220</ref> It did, however, like many churches of the time, incorporate wooden galleries, not used in medieval churches<ref name="Eastlake 1872, p. 221">Eastlake 1872, p. 221</ref> and highly disapproved of by the high church ecclesiological movement.

In 1844 he received the commission to rebuild the Nikolaikirche in Hamburg (completed 1863), following an international competition.<ref name="Hitchcock 1977, p. 153">Hitchcock 1977, p. 153</ref> Scott's design had originally been placed third in the competition, the winner being one in a Florentine inspired style by Gottfried Semper, but the decision was overturned by a faction who favoured a Gothic design.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Scott's entry had been the only design in the Gothic style.<ref name="Bayley 1983, p. 43"/>

In 1854 he remodelled the Camden Chapel in Camberwell, a project in which the critic John Ruskin took a close interest and made many suggestions. He added an apse, in a Byzantine style, integrating it to the existing plain structure by substituting a waggon roof for the existing flat ceiling.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Scott was appointed architect to Westminster Abbey in 1849, and in 1853 he built a Gothic terraced block adjoining the abbey in Broad Sanctuary. In 1858 he designed ChristChurch Cathedral, Christchurch, New Zealand which now lies partly ruined following the earthquake in 2011 and subsequent attempts by the Anglican Church authorities to demolish it. Demolition was blocked after appeals by the people of Christchurch, and in September 2017 the Christchurch Diocesan Synod announced that the cathedral would be reinstated.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The choir stalls at Lancing College in Sussex, which Scott designed with Walter Tower, were among many examples of his work that incorporated green men.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Later, Scott went beyond copying mediaeval English gothic for his Victorian Gothic or Gothic Revival buildings, and began to introduce features from other styles and European countries as evidenced in his Midland red-brick construction, the Midland Grand Hotel at London's St Pancras Station, from which approach Scott believed a new style might emerge.

File:Catherine Parr's tomb in St Mary's Chapel, Sudeley Castle (5063).jpg
Tomb of Catherine Parr, designed by Gilbert Scott

In 1863, after restoration of the chapel at Sudeley Castle, the remains of Queen Catherine Parr were placed in a new neo-Gothic canopied tomb designed by Gilbert Scott<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and created by sculptor John Birnie Philip.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Between 1864 and 1876, the Albert Memorial, designed by Scott, was constructed in Hyde Park. It was a commission on behalf of Queen Victoria in memory of her husband, Prince Albert.

Scott advocated the use of Gothic architecture for secular buildings, rejecting what he called "the absurd supposition that Gothic architecture is exclusively and intrinsically ecclesiastical."<ref name="Eastlake 1872, p. 221"/> He was the winner of a competition to design new buildings in Whitehall to house the Foreign Office and War Office. Before work began, however, the administration which had approved his plans went out of office. Palmerston, the new Prime Minister, objected to Scott's use of the Gothic, and the architect – after some resistance – drew up new plans in a more acceptable style.<ref>Eastlake 1872, pp. 311– 2</ref>

Scott designed the memorial to Thomas Clarkson in Wisbech, where his brother Rev John Scott was vicar. The Clarkson Memorial was completed after his death under the direction of his son John in 1881.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Honours

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Commemorative Window in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey, London
Commemorative window in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey, London

Scott was awarded the RIBA's Royal Gold Medal in 1859. He was appointed an Honorary Liveryman of the Turners' Company; and on 9 August 1872 he was knighted, choosing the style Sir Gilbert Scott.<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He died in 1878 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

A London County Council "blue plaque" (in fact brown) was placed in 1910 to mark Scott's residence at the Admiral's House on Admiral's Walk in Hampstead.<ref name="EngHet">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Family

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Scott married Caroline Oldrid of Boston in 1838. Two of his sons George Gilbert Scott, Jr. (founder of Watts & Company in 1874) and John Oldrid Scott, and his grandson Giles Gilbert Scott, were also prominent architects.<ref name="Allinson">Template:Cite book</ref> His third son, photographer, Albert Henry Scott (1844–65) died at the age of twenty-one; George Gilbert designed his funerary monument in St Peter's Church, Petersham, whilst he was living at The Manor House at Ham in Richmond.<ref name="Scott listing">Template:National Heritage List for England</ref> His fifth and youngest son was the botanist Dukinfield Henry Scott.<ref>Template:Cite ODNB</ref> He was also great-uncle of the architect Elisabeth Scott.<ref name="odnb">Template:Cite ODNB</ref>

Pupils

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Template:Unsourced Scott's success attracted a large number of pupils and many would go on to have successful careers of their own, not always as architects. Some notable pupils are as follows, their time in Scott's office shown after their name: Hubert Austin (1868), Joseph Maltby Bignell (1859–78), George Frederick Bodley (1845–56), Charles Buckeridge (1856–57), Somers Clarke (1865), William Henry Crossland (dates uncertain), C. Hodgson Fowler (1856–60), Thomas Garner (1856–61), Thomas Graham Jackson (1858–61), John T. Micklethwaite (1862–69), Benjamin Mountfort (1841–46), John Norton (1870–78), George Gilbert Scott, Jr. (1856–63), John Oldrid Scott (1858–78), J. J. Stevenson (1858–60), George Edmund Street (1844–49), and William White (1845–47).

Books

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Additionally he wrote over forty pamphlets and reports. As well as publishing articles, letters, lectures and reports in The Builder, The Ecclesiologist, The Building News, The British Architect, The Civil Engineer's and Architect's Journal, The Illustrated London News, The Times and Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Architectural work

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File:St Pancras Railway Station 2012-06-23.jpg
Although he is best known for his Gothic revival churches, Scott felt that the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras station was his most successful project
File:Bombay University Convocation Hall in the 1870s.jpg
Scott designed the Mumbai University Convocation Hall (1870), working from London, and it is now part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site
File:Snaresbrook Crown Court.jpg
Wanstead Infant Orphan Asylum (1842), now Snaresbrook Crown Court

His projects include:

Public buildings

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File:Sandbach Literary Institute.jpg
Sandbach Literary Institution (1857)
File:University of Glasgow Gilbert Scott Building - Feb 2008.jpg
The University of Glasgow's main building (1870)
File:Panoramic view of Brill's swimming bath, Brighton. Lithograp Wellcome V0012261.jpg
Panoramic view of Brill's swimming bath, Brighton. Lithograph by J. Drayton Wyatt
  • Brill Swimming Baths, Brighton (1866–69), demolished 1929
  • Clifton Hampden Bridge, Oxfordshire (1867)
  • The library of the Grammar School (now Hall Cross School) in Doncaster (1868)
  • Market Cross, Helmsley, Yorkshire (1869)
  • School Nocton, Lincolnshire (1869)
  • Extension to Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford (1869–71)
  • Lincoln's Inn, London, Library extension (1870–72), New Chambers Block A (1873) and New Chambers Block B (1876–78)
  • The main building of the new campus of the University of Glasgow (1870), often called the Gilbert Scott Building
  • Savernake Hospital, Wiltshire (1871–72)
  • Gatehouse to Ramsgate Cemetery, Kent (1872)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
  • The University Senate Hall, Mumbai University (1869–74)
  • The University Library and Rajabai Clock Tower, Mumbai University (1869–78)
  • The Clarkson Memorial in Wisbech. Scott first put forward designs in 1875, but work did not start until 1880. The eventual design was a slightly altered version of Scott's original design.

Domestic buildings

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Church buildings

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File:Cambridge University, St John's College Chapel, by George Gilbert Scott, 1866-1869.jpg
St John's College Chapel, Cambridge (1866–1869)
File:StJohnsCambChapel02.jpg
The chapel of St John's College, Cambridge is characteristic of Scott's many church designs

Restorations

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Churches

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Scott was involved in major restorations of medieval church architecture, all across England.

File:Lichwestfrontdetail.jpg
The West Front of Lichfield Cathedral

Cathedrals

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Additionally, Scott designed the Mason and Dixon monument in York Minster (1860), prepared plans for the restoration of Bristol Cathedral in 1859 and Norwich Cathedral in 1860 neither of which resulted in a commission, and designed a pulpit for Lincoln Cathedral in 1863.

Abbeys, priories and collegiate churches

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Other restoration work

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Scott restored the Inner Gateway (also known as the Abbey Gateway) of Reading Abbey in 1860–61 after its partial collapse.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> St Mary's of Charity in Faversham, which was restored (and transformed, with an unusual spire and unexpected interior) by Scott in 1874, and Dundee Parish Church, and designed the chapels of Exeter College, Oxford, St John's College, Cambridge and King's College, London. He also designed St Paul's Cathedral, Dundee.

Lichfield Cathedral's ornate West Front was extensively renovated by Scott from 1855 to 1878. He restored the cathedral to the form he believed it took in the Middle Ages, working with original materials where possible and creating imitations when the originals were not available. It is recognisedTemplate:Who as some of his finest work.

In 1854 Gilbert Scott began a restoration of Sudeley Castle "working on the western side of the inner court in the style of the existing Medieval and Elizabethan buildings" and subsequently began the restoration of St Mary's chapel, with the assistance of John Drayton Wyatt.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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See also

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References

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Sources

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