Sir George Gilbert Scott was the most prominent and most prolific architect of the 19th century. Perhaps best known today for the Albert memorial and the Midland Hotel at St Pancras, Scott was celebrated in his day as a designer of churches and a restorer of cathedrals. Scott’s career, from his early days as a designer of workhouses, though his awakening to Gothic architecture by reading Pugin, to his knighthood and his burial in Westminster Abbey, is outlined in this talk. It details his spat with Lord Palmerston over his deigns for the Foreign Office and looks at a neglected aspect of his work, his country houses. Taking Ripon Cathedral as an example, it also looks at his cathedral restoration work – which attracted criticism later in his career, notably from William Morris. Scott’s Ripon restoration shows how his intervention could be sensitive and careful (and vital to stop imminent collapse) but also occasionally cavalier. It is certainly due to his work that Ripon and at least 25 other British cathedrals are still standing.
