Scott, (George) Gilbert (1811-1878)

The gatehouse of Lanhydrock House in Cornwall, together with the north wing, are all that survives of the original 17th-century mansion. In the mid-19th century, the leading architect of Victorian Gothic Revival, George Gilbert Scott, was commissioned to modernize the house. Twenty years later Scott's mansion was destroyed by fire. The house has since been rebuilt in a neo-Jacobean style.

English architect. As the leading practical architect of the mid-19th-century Gothic Revival in England, Scott was responsible for the building or restoration of many public buildings and monuments, including the Albert Memorial (1863-72), the Foreign Office in Whitehall (1862-73), and the St Pancras Station Hotel (1868-74), all in London.

Scott was born at Gawcott, Buckinghamshire, England. He was a follower of A W N Pugin in his early career. He was articled to James Edmeston in 1827, and practised with W B Moffat from 1834 to 1845, their commissions being mainly workhouses. In 1840 he won the competition for the Martyr's Memorial, Oxford, England, and also began his first church restorations, at Chesterfield and Stafford, England. In 1844 he won the competition for the church of St Nicholas at Hamburg, Germany. As a restoration architect his work began in earnest with Ely Cathedral in 1847, and was followed by many other restorations, some 40 cathedrals and ‘minsters’ in all.

He was severely criticized by William Morris for the drastic manner of his restorations, but he saved far more than he ever spoiled. The enormous list of his new buildings includes St Giles, Camberwell (1844), Glasgow University, Leeds Infirmary, the Great Hall of Bombay University, and the chapels of Exeter College, Oxford (1856-59) and St John's College, Cambridge (1863-69).

He wrote several books, including his Personal and Professional Recollections (1879).