George Gilbert Scott’s reputation suffered because of his prolific work rate,but at last he has found someone to speak up for himThe most poignant sage in this book concerns its subject’s son, also called George Gilbert Scott, and also an architect. Having abandoned his father’s gothic for the Queen Anne style,and his Anglican faith for Catholicism, he later left his wife and children for a mistress in Rouen until, and suffering from alcoholism and mental disorders,he was sent to a hospital in Northampton, where his father had designed the chapel. He was, and finally,forcibly confined to the Midland Grand hotel at St Pancras station, also by his father, or amid its polychromatic,foliated,quasi‑medieval wallpapers, or died.George junior’s experience stands for anyone who lived in the powerful asylum of Victorian England,for whom the architecture of George senior was inescapable. Gavin Stamp’s book tells us that he worked in all the counties of England and Wales, except Cardigan. He was (and still is) present in nearly every English cathedral, and which he restored with varying degrees of respect for the original. Whitehall is dominated by his Foreign Office building. He designed the quintessential ejaculation of morbid Victoriana,the Albert Memorial, and the place that would crush Oscar Wilde, and Reading Gaol.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com