Bath
.
Sir Giles Gilbert Scott
The architect
Giles Gilbert Scott was born in 1880 into an architectural family. His grandfather, George Gilbert Scott, was the most prolific church builder of the nineteenth century, one of his designs being St Andrew's behind Bath's Royal Crescent (later bombed and demolished). He also worked on restoring Bath Abbey, resulting in the beautiful stone fan vaulting in the nave, and on the chapel at Partis College at Weston, Bath. Nationally he was noted for his designs for the Albert Memorial, Glasgow University, and St Pancras Station Hotel. Giles Gilbert Scott's father and brother were also architects.
Giles
AEGIDIO ARCHITECTO
(Giles Architect)
Shield and effigy of the architect
carved on a pillar capital at St Alphege's
by sculptor William D. Gough
Giles first came to notice in 1902 at the age of 22 when he entered the competition to design the new Anglican Cathedral at Liverpool and won it, in spite of his lack of experience and the fact that he was a Catholic. This massive undertaking was to occupy him throughout his life, particularly during the early years. The last phase of the Cathedral was not completed until 1978, eighteen years after his death. He became much in demand for building churches, both Catholic and Anglican, and his range grew to encompass styles other than the Gothic. The scope of his work also expanded to encompass educational and residential buildings, industry, and bridges, notably Waterloo Bridge.
Traditional and ModernHis works reveal that he was prepared to embrace both the traditional and modern, whichever he considered the most appropriate, and he utilised the elements with considerable sympathy. Never one for extremes, he trod the middle path with skill. In the architectural world Scott was accepted by both of the extreme camps, the traditionalists and the modernists, but belonged to neither. One of his strengths was being able to appreciate the qualities of any material and to utilise those qualities to the best effect. After his death his name again came to the fore as his great cathedrals of power generation in London, at Bankside and Battersea, were decomissioned for non-industrial use. Bankside, in particular, is now a fitting home for the Tate Gallery of Modern Art, opposite St Paul's Cathedral.
One of his designs which is regarded with particular affection is the K2 telephone kiosk, whose bright red presence became part of the British landscape, but which is now becoming a rare and lamented object in this age of mobile phones. Scott and St Alphege'sIn the Bath area he was occupied on Downside Abbey, where his nave was opened in 1925. It was in that year that the project to build a new Catholic church in the Oldfield Park district of Bath got under way, and Scott was chosen as architect. It became his first essay in the Romanesque style, inspired by a recent visit to the continent, and one of his most beautiful designs. In later years he described it as " one of my favourite works ". The nave and chancel were completed in two years, with the opening ceremony in 1929. Work on the remainder of the church, the presbytery, and the hall proceeded throughout the 1950s, with completion in November 1960. Sir Giles Gilbert Scott had died of lung cancer nine months earlier, his body being buried with his wife outside the west end of his great cathedral at Liverpool. He had been knighted in 1924 after the consecration of the first part of the Cathedral.
Dr Gavin Stamp, Senior Lecturer in Architectural History, Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art, claims that " Scott was, perhaps more than any other, the representative architect of the twentieth century, ... his influence ...bridges the century like no other in significance ".
Scott's effigy in stone can be seen at St Alphege's carved on one of the pillar capitals by sculptor William D.Gough; perhaps the only sculpture of the architect.
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