Giles Gilbert Scott

Sir Giles Gilbert Scott OM RA FRIBA was an English architect. Known for his work on the New Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Battersea Power Station, Liverpool Cathedral, and designing the iconic red telephone box. Scott came from a family of architects. His father was an architect, the son of Sir Gilbert Scott, a more famous architect, known for designing the Albert Memorial and the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station.

About Giles Gilbert Scott in brief

Sir Giles Gilbert Scott OM RA FRIBA was an English architect. Known for his work on the New Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Battersea Power Station, Liverpool Cathedral, and designing the iconic red telephone box. Scott came from a family of architects. His father was an architect, the son of Sir Gilbert Scott, a more famous architect, known for designing the Albert Memorial and the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station. When Scott was three, his father was declared to be of unsound mind and was temporarily confined to the Bethlem Royal Hospital. Scott and his brothers were raised as Roman Catholics; their father was a Catholic convert. Scott, when still a young man, saw the possibility of designing in Gothic without the profusion of detail that marked their work. He had an unusually free hand in working out his ideas, as Moore generally worked at home, leaving Freeman to run the office. In later years Scott remarked to John Betjeman, He was a far better architect than my grandfather and yet look at the reputations of the two men! Scott’s father and his grandfather had been exponents of High Victorian Gothic; Scott’s early work, including Liverpool Cathedral Lady Chapel, clearly influenced his early work. The choice of winner was even contentious when it emerged that Scott was a Roman Catholic. Because of Scott’s age and inexperience, the committee appointed Bodley as joint architect to work in tandem with him.

A historian observes that it was generous of Bodley to enter into a working relationship with a young, untried, and untried student to enter a relationship into a relationship with. Scott’s work was the only design to be constructed so far that had been a pipe-rack, and it was only so far as his work had been constructed that he had been able to credit his work with no credit at all. In 1903, he worked on the Rintosh and Rintosh buildings in his home town of Rotherham, in the south of England. He also designed the London Bridge, which is now a Grade II listed building. He was married to his wife, Ellen King Samson, and had three children, including a son, Richard Gilbert Scott. He is buried at St Paul’s Cathedral, London, with his wife and a daughter, Anne, who died in 2008. He died in a nursing home in London, and is survived by his three sons, Richard, Richard and Anne, and his daughter, Anne, and a son-in-law, Julian Scott, who was also an architect. In January 1899 Scott became an articled pupil in the office of Temple Moore, who had studied with his father. In 1901, while Scott was still a pupil in Moore’s practice, the diocese of Liverpool announced a competition to select the architect of a new cathedral. Two well-known architects were appointed as assessors for an open competition for architects wishing to be considered. Architects were invited by public advertisement to submit portfolios of their work for consideration by Bodley and Shaw.

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